Emotional Context, Sherlock
by versarilaetus
Summary: After Eurus's emotional vivisection, Sherlock returns to Baker Street and tries to put the shattered pieces of his life back together. Takes place immediately after the Final Problem but before that happy little montage. Shameless Sherlolly. Fluff with a little angst. Will probably lead to a little naughtiness.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Sherlock leaned heavily against the brick wall as John fumbled with the keys to his flat. It had only been a few hours since they had left the childhood home that he had forgotten—left the sister that had been stolen from him and the darkness she had left in her wake. It felt like a lifetime. The moment he had looked into Eurus's black eyes, it was as if his whole life had rewound like a video in an old VHS player. Each moment of not knowing _who_ he was or _why_ he was, playing out in an endlessly painful loop in his head.

He ran a shaking hand through his disheveled hair. The pounding in his temple still seemed to thrum in time with the relentless beating of the helicopter blades that had carried them back into central London.

John had fallen asleep before they had even lifted off the ground, still wet and wrapped up in the gray shock blanket, oblivious to the roaring engine. Sometimes Sherlock forgot that he was a soldier—a veteran of war and upheaval. It was likely not the first time that John had slept in the middle of chaos, only moments after his life had been threatened. He had trained his body to rest when necessary, always prepared for the next battle.

It was a strange thing to envy. His friend, usually so filled with messy, useless emotions, was the one who had rested peacefully against the vibrating metal of the helicopter frame.

But Sherlock couldn't sleep—was afraid he would never sleep again. He had stared blindly out the window through eyes that were gritty and raw as they swept over the raging white-capped sea. The horrible images from the night marched through his mind like a macabre parade—young Victor in a pirate's hat, Mycroft down the barrel of his own gun, John's face starting up at him from the bottom of a well, Molly's coffin.

He dragged a hand over his face. God, he could use a hit. Anything to ease the ruthless memories, if only for a moment. He thought about his secret stash, hidden in the far corner of the kitchen cabinet, tucked safely in the old tin of biscuits that John hated. Probably ashes now—as well as the rest of 221B Baker Street.

He tried not to groan. It really had been a monumentally shitty day.

"Sherlock."

He opened his eyes. He wasn't sure when he had closed them.

John stood in the open doorway, his face drawn and haggard. Sherlock straightened, every muscle in his body screaming at him to lie the bloody hell down.

The blurry image of John hesitated. Sherlock blinked, trying to understand why they weren't going inside, but it was like thinking through mud. His brain felt addled—each jumbled piece of thought refusing to catalog itself into any recognizable order. He supposed this is what John felt like every day. It was uncomfortably common.

John leaned forward, "Right. Well. The thing is mate…" John paused, searching for words. Normally Sherlock would have already deduced what John was on about, but at the moment it took all his focus not to sway on his feet. So he waited.

John cleared his throat. "Molly is here."

Oh.

Sherlock braced a hand against the wall. _I love you._ The words echoed inside his skull. Acid burned at the back of his throat.

He could turn around and leave. It was only six block to the warehouse. Six blocks to the prick of a needle on his forearm and blissful oblivion. There would be a free mattress somewhere. Or he could kick out some unconscious junkie. It would smell of urine and mold, or worse, but he wouldn't care once the drugs hit his veins. The crack den suddenly seem like heaven compared to what waited for him inside. He tried to swallow, but his tongue felt swollen and thick.

Molly—his friend. Who had saved him when no one else could. Molly who never asked for anything. Molly who he had systematically ripped apart and humiliated. She deserved an explanation, at the very least.

Besides, he wasn't sure he could make it to John's couch, let alone six blocks.

Decision made, Sherlock snapped his collar up and buried his hands in his pockets, hiding the tremor that he knew Molly would notice immediately.

"Go on then," he said to John, his voice so rough that he barely recognized it.

John looked at him for a long moment. Sherlock wondered what he saw. Did John recognize the hidden devastation behind his blood shot eyes? Could he see past the wrinkled suit and pale skin to the bloody shredded rags of his heart? He couldn't be sure.

"I told her," John said, "Well, I texted her. The details, I mean. She knows what was happening. You know, when you…called."

Sherlock felt relief like a balm. Maybe he wouldn't have to explain himself after all. "Alright," he replied slowly.

"She still deserves an apology," John said, glancing up as the street light above their heads winked out. The sky had lightened, the morning sun riding the curtails of night.

Sherlock sighed. "Yes, of course."

John turned to go inside but then turned immediately back, "Just don't…well, don't be yourself."

Sherlock was too tired to roll his eyes so he just nodded and followed John into the apartment.

He tried to sweep into the flat like he always did, coat billowing after him, but the effect was ruined when his feet betrayed him and he stumbled. Trying to maintain a shred of dignity, he leaned a shoulder against the wall.

Molly didn't look at him as she turned away from the window with a sleeping Rosie tucked under her chin, but even from a distance Sherlock could see the strain around her eyes. She smiled weakly at John.

"The babysitter called a few hours ago. She had to leave so I just popped over," she said, her voice hushed. She placed a kiss on the baby's forehead before handing Rosie over to her dad.

"Thank you for coming Molly," John said, gently rocking the baby as she stirred. "I don't know what we would do without you."

Molly reached out to tuck the blanket tighter around Rosie's chubby arm, "It's no problem. Really. I like being with her." She paused and touched the baby's cheek lightly, her voice a little wistful. "She's a happy baby and she smells good and she reminds me of Mary."

Sherlock frowned at those words. The last thing John needed tonight was a reminder of his dead wife. But his friend just looked down at Rosie, a small smile playing over his face. It was a look that made Sherlock want to look away. A look that seemed powerful and intimate. A look he really didn't understand.

John brushed the yellow curls of Rosie's hair back, "Yes. She does," he replied, as the baby started fussing in his arms. "You are a god sent Molly Hooper."

Molly blushed. "You better get her to bed. It took me hours to get her to fall asleep. I think she might have a tooth coming in."

John nodded, sending a not-so-subtle look Sherlock's way before disappearing into the back room. Molly stood staring after them for a moment, her hands loose and empty by her sides.

She was wearing blue cotton pajama bottoms with ridiculous yawning kittens printed all over them and a faded grey t-shirt that swallowed her small frame. Her feet were bare and Sherlock could see that her toes were painted a pale pink where they curled into the carpet. Her usual bound hair cascaded loosely around her shoulders, a dark curtain that hid her face from his view.

She looked…soft. Warm and comforting like a cup of tea on a rainy day or a murder after a long boring dry spell.

For the first time in his life Sherlock Holmes considered what it would be like to come home from a grueling case and sink into a women's arms.

No, that was wrong—imprecise. Not any women.

 _This_ one. This women who turned to him, her warm eyes seeing what he didn't want her to see as they searched his face. This women who shifted anxiously from foot to foot, dark smudges under her eyes from the late night. Sherlock cleared his throat. She smiled nervously, worrying at the end of her shirt.

For once in his life, he had no idea what to say.

Molly tucked her long hair around one delicate ear, and he suddenly wondered what it would be like to bury his face in the soft curve of her neck. To close his eyes and brush his lips against the frantic pulse that he could see beating just under the fragile skin at the base of her throat. Would she run her fingers through his hair, murmuring incoherent words of comfort until the ache in his chest eased? Until he could breath?

Bemused, he waved his hand in the air, sweeping away the thought. He was clearly fatigued to let such common images muddle his brain. Those sorts of comforts were for other people, not Sherlock Holmes. Since John, he had realized that having other people in life his could be beneficial. That perhaps, there were blank areas in his genius. Molly added value to his existence, and he considered her a friend. She was necessary, enjoyable even, but nothing more. Romantic entanglements were not his area.

He turned abruptly, ignoring Molly's startled face, and shrugged off his coat. He hung it on the back of the door, pleased when he managed not to topple over. He unfastened his suit coat, annoyed at the spatters of mud that marred the expensive fabric. A consequence of dragging your best friend out of a dark well in the middle of the night. He smoothed his hands over the wrinkles in his shirt the best he could.

By the time he turned back, Molly had buttoned her own coat over her pajamas and was winding a rainbow colored scarf around her neck. God help him, did she have to be so sweet? So innocent? So _Molly?_

 _Don't make me say it Sherlock…._

The silence screamed between them. He stepped forward on unsteady legs, "Molly," he said, "I'm—"

"Are you okay?" she interrupted.

He stopped abruptly, "What?"

She finally looked up at him and her dark eyes were so warm that this time he _did_ sway on his feet. He didn't see her move but suddenly she was there in front of him, her hand firm and steady on his arm.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. He blinked down her, not understanding.

He frowned at her. "What could you possibly be sorry for?"

She shifted, and he could smell the shampoo in her hair—floral with a hint of vanilla. It was like her, simple and practical but lovely all the same. It suited her, and Sherlock discovered with alarm that he was having a more difficult time then usual suppressing the image of Molly in the shower, lather sliding over her shoulders and down the curve of her spine…

"Your sister, Sherlock," she said. He snapped back to the present, suddenly dreadfully aware of her closeness as she searched his eyes. "What a horrible thing to discover. And Mycroft keeping it from you all these years."

Her mouth thinned and he was shocked to discover that Molly was angry—furious, in fact. But not _at_ him. She was angry _for_ him. He wasn't sure what to do about that revelation. Molly's fingers tightened on his arm. "And the flat!" she fumed. "When I heard, I was just…heartbroken. You must be in shock."

He glanced over her head to the couch, avoiding that knowing look. His limbs felt impossibly heavy. "It has been a decidingly trying day," he agreed.

"I'm really am sorry Sherlock," she said softly and the kindness in her voice was almost his undoing. She shook her head. "You must be exhausted" she murmured.

"Molly," he started.

"Don't," she interrupted again, her hand dropping from his arm. She took a deep breath. "Just don't, okay? For me?"

Her eyes settled on his again, and then darted away. Spots of red colored her cheeks. It was disturbingly attractive. "Let's just pretend that it never happened. The phone call, I mean. It was stupid anyway. Once John told me it was for a case…" she trailed off, biting her lip nervously. His gaze dipped to her mouth. Would her lips taste like vanilla too?

Molly glanced up again, her brow wrinkling in confusion. He swept his thoughts away and forced his face into a flat smile. Delirious—he must be delirious. He inclined his head to her, aware that the movement was strangely formal considering the circumstances. "I'm pleased that you…understand."

Something he didn't recognize flickered across her face. Really, he needed to sleep. He couldn't deduce the most basic of human emotions. It was infuriating.

And dangerous.

"Well!" Molly exclaimed suddenly, clapping her hands together and stepping back further. "You must be desperate get some sleep, so I'll just be going." She pulled an alarmingly pink fuzzy hat out of her coat pocket and pulled it over her head. It was a hideous hat—truly horrible— but the color accentuated the pink on her cheeks prettily.

"Mrs Hudson is staying with me until you get the flat sorted. I'll be happy to help you clean up and put it back together if you like. But it's no hurry. You both need sleep. Tell John to call me if he needs me to mind Rosie again—or not. It's all fine. I'm sure you need a few days to recover." She edged toward the door, babbling nervously.

He reached over her head to hold the front door open and immediately realized his own mistake when she tried to scoot past him in the narrow doorway. The wind lifted her hair so that it tickled his forearm as she brushed by him, sending strange sparks of electricity up his arm.

She paused suddenly, her head down, as if she were deciding something. For some reason, Sherlock found himself bracing for whatever she was about to do.

Quickly, as if she would lose her nerve if she hesitate, Molly stepped back over to him. He stiffened when she rested her small hand on his chest, her thumb brushing the sensitive skin under his collar bone. She rose on her toes to brushed a kiss on his cheek. His breath stuttered. She pulled back slightly, and they were so close that he could see the golden specks in her warm brown eyes. He clenched his hands into fists at his sides. Molly licked her lips nervously and it took his last shred of willpower not to dip his head and taste them.

She jerked away, turning to the door. She paused with one hand on the doorframe. "If you need anything Sherlock— anything…" she gazed back at him over her shoulder, her dark eyes swallowing him whole. "I'm always here." She looked out into the night and her last words were so quiet he had to strain to hear her. "Always," she whispered, almost to herself.

The word was like a shotgun blast to what was left of his heart. He opened his mouth to respond, but she had gone, slipping out into the cold dawn. Sherlock shivered as a bitter wind swirled around his feet. He closed the door, resting his palm on it for a long moment before turning back to the living room.

John stood by the couch holding a pile of blankets with a pillow balanced on top. "You are an idiot," he observed. Sherlock sighed.

He crossed the room, taking the bedding from John as he went. "So you are fond of saying…" he replied as he sunk onto the couch.

"You don't deserve her," John said.

Sherlock flopped back on the pillow, not bothering to even take off his suit jacket. He almost wept at the feeling of being off his feet. "I am aware of that John," he sighed, kicking the blanket haphazardly around him. It was still half folded but it was warm. He wished he were in his own bed but right now John's lumpy old couch felt blissful. He closed his eyes.

He listened as John crossed to close the curtains. Listened as he shut off the light and moved across the room. Sherlock heard his footsteps stop at the hallway entrance.

"You should go after her anyway," John said quietly.

His eyes snapped open. "She makes you better, Sherlock." John sighed and Sherlock knew that his friend was thinking about Mary. He wanted to offer some words of comfort but there was nothing to say. It is what it is.

After a moment John continued, "You never listen to me but maybe...well, maybe this time you should. You are bloody brilliant, but there are things you don't understand about this world. Things you don't understand because Eurus and Mycroft stole them from you a long time ago."

John paused. "Finding someone who believes you are a better man then you really are...people search their whole lives for something like that.

Sherlock could feel the memories eating away at his insides, black and full of poison. When he finally answered, his voice was rough in the darkness. "I'm not most people, John. I don't need that sort of thing."

This time the silence was so long that Sherlock was certain that his friend had slipped off to bed but then John laughed softly, the noise strangely hollow. "We both know that isn't true, Sherlock."

He stared into the shadows for a long time after John shuffled away and desperately tried to slow the relentless bullet train of his mind. Tried to ignore the tremor in his hands that longed for the euphoric silence that followed a hit. Tried to block out the sound of a violin playing in a lonely cell. He closed his eyes again, but it was a long time indeed before Sherlock Holmes surrendered to sleep.

When sleep finally managed to haul him into unconsciousness, the lingering smell of vanilla chased him all the way down.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you for all the thoughtful reviews! I save them to my phone and read them when I'm feeling like being an adult (or a writer) is just a little too difficult. I love writing Molly and Sherlock, they are just so complicated and lovely. I'm planning for this story to be about half a dozen chapters long or so but I never know what the characters will do so we'll see. Thank you again for reading!**

Chapter 2

Molly nudged the charred mystery object out from under Sherlock's chair with her toe. She poked at it nervously with a finger and grimaced. It was a hand—black and shriveled—but definitely a hand. Molly rolled her eyes. She sincerely hoped that the loose appendage was part of one of his experiments, but she could never be too sure with Sherlock Holmes. She wouldn't be at all surprised to find the body of someone who had irritated him shoved under his bed.

She shoved the singed hand in the trash bag and wondered exactly when her life had started to careen out of control. Probably when she had fallen in love with a lunatic.

It seemed like just yesterday that she had been a smart, confident honors student who had landed her dream job at Bart's straight out of uni—the youngest women to ever hold the job. And damn it, she had worked her ass off to get it. She had spent so many nights hunched over thick anatomy text books until her eyes burned, that she hadn't even blinked when they had offered her the evening shift at the morgue.

Molly bent to retrieve a soot covered pair of handcuffs from under the coffee table and seriously wondered if she should have spent more time dating in uni.

It wasn't as if she had fallen for Sherlock the first time he swept into the lab with Lestrade trailing behind. He had been so filled with vicious brilliance that she had been stunned. It was like being in the path of a beautiful tornado, dark and filled with noise and fury. He destroyed everything in his path with his barbed wire tongue—including her.

No, it had been months later—when the body of a little girl had shown up in her morgue. She had been dreading it; her first solo autopsy of a child. She wasn't sure how long she had stared down at the tiny body laying on the cold steel table, but it took her three tries to work her gloves on over her trembling hands.

She had been blinking back tears when Sherlock had burst into the lab. She had grit her teeth but part of her had been happy to see him. His presence filled up the room and chased away the horrible silence. She warned him that one inappropriate remark—just one—and she would happily stabbed him with her scalpel.

But instead of his usual calloused assessments of the body, Sherlock had just stood across from her quietly asking her questions for the whole autopsy. Molly had been so focused on the case that before she knew it the job was done, and her hands were steady once again.

Afterward she had tried to thank him, but he had just waved her off as he plunged into his deductions. She had listened with half an ear while washing up, not even noticing when his voice trailed off.

When she had turned back to the autopsy table, Sherlock's long fingers were curled around the little girl's foot.

Her breath left her as she stood watching him. He had stood that way for a long moment, his head bent so his dark curls obscuring his profile. When he had looked up at her, his striking eyes pinning her with such fury and despair that it a cracked open something inside of her.

"I'll find who did this," he promised, his voice low and dangerous. Molly had found herself unable to respond when he had turned on his heel and strode off, leaving her alone in the empty morgue with hot tears running down her cheeks and a fissure in her chest that had never really healed.

And she had been completely lost ever since.

Molly's heart ached at the memory. She kicked at a pile of ash that used to be books, uncovering the silver corner of John's laptop. She leaned down and pulled it out of the mess, wincing a little at the twinge in her back.

When she had brought Mrs. Hudson back to her Baker Street hours ago, Molly hadn't really been planning on cleaning up duty, but the minute she saw the state of the boy's flat she had rolled up her sleeves and gotten to work. It was her day off, but the idea of Sherlock and John coming back to this after all they had been through this year, well…

She brushed of the top of the computer, coughing at the black cloud of soot that swirled up around her head. The computer was dented and scorched, but she set it on the desk, thinking that perhaps something could be recovered.

She glanced at the clock, startled to see that it was getting late. Her hair was plastered to the back of her neck, but her hands were too filthy to be much help. She had painted her nails the night before, but they were caked in dirt now. She sighed. It would take forever to get the grime out of them. Annoyed, she swiped at the hair tickling her face with her forearm. Maybe Mrs Hudson would let her change downstairs—

"You look dreadful."

Molly jumped at the rumble of the familiar voice behind her, pleased that she managed to suppress a girly squeak of surprise as she spun around. John glared at the back of Sherlock's head as they stepped into what was left of the living room.

"Thank you," she said without missing a beat. "I think you meant to say thank you."

"Did I?" Sherlock asked, spine straight and hands loosely cupped behind his back. He scanned her mildly before he turned and shrugged off his coat. Molly couldn't help but notice that the dark bruises under his eyes had eased. His black curls were still damp against the crisp collar of his shirt and there was a tightness around his mouth that she had never seen before, but he looked so normal standing in the doorway in his tailored suit—so _Sherlock_ —that she felt the fingers of relief loosen the knot in her chest

Sherlock was here in 221B Baker Street, alive and insulting her—Molly felt her world right itself.

"Yes, you sod, you mean thank you," John insisted as he crossed to the desk. He picked up the battered laptop, shaking his head in disgust. "You really don't have to help clean up, Molly."

Molly tucked another loose hair behind her head, "It's okay. I don't have anywhere I need to be."

Sherlock bent to pick up the skull from the floor, barely sparing her a glance. "Wrong," he said flatly.

Molly shifted on her feet, glancing nervously at John. "Pardon?"

Sherlock raised an eyebrow as he placed the skull back on the mantel. "You have a date in less then an hour. You really should go home and do something about your hair."

"Sherlock!" John hissed.

Molly blushed and willed herself not to glance in the mirror. Her hand clenched around the white trash bag as she watched Sherlock dust off his chair with a charred piece of cloth that appeared to be one of John's old jumpers. He settled down into the chair like some sort of posh prince and steepled his long fingers under his chin. Molly tried to glared at him, but was pretty sure she was failing miserably.

"How in the world—" she started.

"Molly, for the love of all that is holy—" John interrupted in exasperation.

But it was too late. Molly caught the whisper of a smile on Sherlock's lips before he launched into his deductions with a wave of his hand. "Despite your current state, your nails are recently painted. It's Friday night and the bag at the door has a pair of silver heels on the top so you were planning on going out this evening. It's getting late and your phone has buzzed three times in the past 5 minutes so you must be meeting someone. This meeting must be imminent or the person in question wouldn't be texting you…"

His eyes flickered over her dispassionately as he rattled off more facts. Only years of practice let her tune him out. Molly stood still under his assault, wondering idly if she had imagined the man in the doorway from two nights ago.

She wasn't sure what had possessed her to kiss him.

Maybe it was the hurt that festered just below the surface of her skin when his gaze skimmed over her. Maybe it was the sorrow she saw in every movement of his body as he helped her to the door, as if he were being crushed under an unavoidable weight. It seemed ridiculous really, for two people so lonely not to comfort each other in a time when they needed it so badly. They were friends after all, as he seemed so fond of reminding her.

So she had leaned in and let her lips brush his cheek, trying to ignore the embers that erupted in the pit of her stomach at his closeness. His smell, smoke and sweat, shouldn't have been appealing but it had made her dizzy just the same.

And maybe it had just been the late hour or his exhaustion, but she could have sworn she felt the air around them thicken and heat with anticipation when she had pulled back. They were so close that she could feel his breath on her lips, and she could have sworn she felt his heart stutter under her palm.

Startled, she had glanced up into his seawater eyes, and his gaze had flickered down to her lips. And for a moment—for just a fraction of a moment—she thought she felt him sway.

Not physically. She was quite sure that he had never moved, but there was something in the atmosphere. Something that spoke of _deciding_ —of _wanting_.

Molly shook her head. No. It wasn't possible. He just wasn't interested in that sort of thing. And if he was, he certainly wouldn't choose someone ordinary like her. If Sherlock Holmes ever let himself get involved with a women it would be someone clever and gorgeous and fascinating. Someone like Irene Adler, she thought with a scowl.

Molly suddenly felt unbelievably tired.

She snapped back to the present just in time to hear the tail end of Sherlock's deduction "…could be a night out with the girls, but you are trying out a new perfume tonight, ergo—a date. Molly, you really shouldn't experiment with a new scent on a first date. The vanilla was really quite nice. This one makes you smell like an old women on her way to a friend's funeral. " Sherlock finished with a flourish, clearly pleased with himself.

Molly threw the trash bag at his smug face.

It arched across the living room in slow motion. He caught it in one hand but it broke open, spilling soot over his white shirt and dumping the contents right into his lap. Molly put her hand to her mouth as Sherlock stared down at himself.

Ok, maybe she wasn't completely over the phone call. But did he really have to be such an insufferable ass all the time?

Molly cringed as Sherlock cooly brushed a used tea bag off his shoulder. John snorted and she couldn't help the giggle that burst out of her. Sherlock did not look amused.

"I do believe you deserved that, my friend," John said.

Ignoring him, Sherlock plucked something out of his lap and held it up. "Is this my hand?"

John squinted at it. "That does appear to be a hand, yes. Unfortunately."

Sherlock glared at her. "Why did you throw it away?" he asked indignantly.

"Um, because it was all burnt up?" Molly replied, wondering if she had fallen into some sort of warped dimension. Which was pretty much how she always felt when talking to Sherlock.

He stood up, all the trash she had picked up falling to the floor at his feet. "Well, of course it was. I was testing how different accelerants effect how charred flesh holds up to decay." He said this slowly, as if he were talking to someone very stupid.

Molly stared at him for three beats. "Right," she said before turning on her heel and headed for the door. "So sorry to inconvenience you with all my helpfulness. Must be dreadful having so many people who care about you." She hitched her bag onto her shoulder, and fled down the stairs without looking back.

She had a date in 30 minutes after all. And there was only so much verbal abuse a person could take in one day, even if that person was unbelievable glad to see a certain consulting detective.

"Brilliant, mate," she heard John say before she slammed the door behind her.

"She threw away my hand," Sherlock replied. "Why would she throw away a perfectly good hand?"

xxx

Molly thanked Mrs. Hudson for letting her get ready in her flat, sending the woman a little wave as she rushed out the door. She wobbled a little on her silver heels as she hurried down the hall cursing herself. She was late.

It had taken her quite a bit longer to get ready for her date then she anticipated, and she was afraid the smell of smoke still lingered in her hair despite her best efforts. She smoothed a hand over the wrinkles in her new shirt. It would just have to do, she thought as she reached for her coat.

"I apologize."

Molly couldn't help but jump at Sherlock's voice, spinning around. "Don't DO that," she shrieked.

He was sitting on the stairs, his hand folded loosely above his bent knees. He had rolled up his sleeves and undone another button at his collar exposing the hollow at the base of his throat and the sharp line of his collarbone. Despite the dark stain on the front of his shirt he looked annoyingly appetizing. It really would be easier if she could hate him.

"I apologize," he repeated.

Molly shrugged on her coat. "John told you to come down then?"

Sherlock stood up. The foyer was small, and she took a small step back to give him room. She didn't feel like being near him right now. "John doesn't tell me what to do," he replied, a slight note of petulance in his voice.

She rolled her eyes. "Really?" she teased.

He was silent and she looked up, her breath catching a little when she realized how close they were. The shadows of the dark hallway cut across his face as he pinned her with those green eyes. "I _am_ sorry, Molly Hooper," his voice a low rumbled that sent sparks skittering down her spine.

She stilled, suddenly aware that this wasn't an apology for the snarky comments upstairs. This was an apology for the phone call. _If it's true then just say it anyway…_

It should have made her feel better. He should be down on his knees begging for her forgiveness, damn it.

But instead, his apology just stole _more_ -his long fingers scraping the last trace of hope from the bottom of the empty barrel of her heart.

Whatever secret schoolgirl illusions she had about that moment...whatever trace of wonder if maybe... _maybe_ he had meant it. He was taking those too. Tainting the memory of those quietly stammered words that had drifted down to her through the bad phone connection and turned them into something cold and brittle.

Molly ducked her head, furious at the hot tears that threatened to ruin her freshly applied mascara. She swallowed around the tightness in her throat.

She felt him step closer, as if he sensed her distress, and suddenly she couldn't breath. Couldn't be here anymore. Couldn't look into his beautiful face and _lie._

"I've got to go, Sherlock," she said, backing away quickly, more grateful then she could remember being to find her voice steady.

She grappled frantically behind her for the doorknob, shooting him what she hoped was a convincing smile. He stepped forward again but stopped at the sound of his phone chiming.

She opened the front door but paused when he frowned down at his mobile. "Lestrade. He's got a case."

Molly nodded, "Yes. Well, good luck. I'll see you at the morgue, I suppose? Probably over a corpse? Maybe-" she cut herself off. God, stop babbling like an idiot Molly. It's just Sherlock.

Just Sherlock. Those were ridiculous words even for her.

He was watching her again, his expression unreadable in the dark hallway. She nodded to herself. Right. This was tied up now wasn't it? They could just go back to normal. Just go back to pretending that he hadn't ripped her heart out of her chest with his bare hands.

She turned to go.

"I've never said those words before," he said quietly. Her heart stopped beating.

 _I love you..._

 _It's always been true..._

Her hand tightened on the doorknob. "You must have," she said, turning back slowly.

He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and leaned a shoulder against the wall. Molly frowned at him. "But surely your mum-" He shook his head, "or even Mycroft for god's sake..."

"No," he replied, his gaze fixed on something over her head. "Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side."

That was Mycroft talking, she was sure of it. She studied him, suddenly aware that despite his light tone and casual posture, that this moment was important. That something had happened on that island with Eurus that had shaken him. Changed him.

It sounded as if he was telling her something, but it felt more like _asking._

God, she loved him. Her heart ached with it. She would give anything to reach the broken man underneath the genius. To coax out the kind man who wouldn't hesitate to protect those he cared about with a ferociousness that stunned her sometimes.

She supposed they all felt the same. Why else would John forgive him for faking his death for two years? Why would Mrs. Hudson let him blow up her building and keep body parts in the icebox with barely a complaint? Why would Lestrade put up with his constant verbal abuse?

They all loved him. But it was like loving the moon-beautiful but untouchable.

Molly Hooper sighed. "How would you know? she asked gently.

"Hmm?" he murmured, his gaze drifted back to meet hers.

"You claim that sentiment is a weakness. But you have never been in love. How could you possibly claim to be an expert?" Her phone buzzed in her pocket but she ignored it. She was definitely going to miss her date.

"I can see what it is like to be a pathologist, but I have never been one. Is it really any different?"

Molly stifled an exasperated huff of laughter. "Not even remotely the same thing, Sherlock."

His brow furrowed the way it always did when he was trying to work out the details of a case. She could practically see the gears in his head spinning into action. He straightened, and she was afraid he would move closer, but he just stood waiting for her to continue.

She shook her head slowly. How could you possibly explain the value of love to someone who had only been hurt by it? She sighed. "You are trying to assess a crime scene without a microscope, Sherlock. Without experiencing love...well, you don't have all the data do you? You have made a false deduction based on only half of the information."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you insinuating that I am wrong, Molly Hooper? I am rarely wrong. Time and again I have seen the devastation that sentiment leaves in its wake. Frankly, the evidence is irrefutable. Love is a dangerous disadvantage." He lowered his voice, glancing briefly up the stairs. "Look at John. Losing Mary...it almost broke him."

Molly crossed her arms, hugging her elbows. "You see but you do not observe," she said with a sad smile. "John would never give up the time he had with Mary. It's illogical to want something that you know will hurt you in the end and yet people have been seeking it out since the beginning of time. Therefore, the _value_ of love must supersede the disadvantage. It's the only logical explanation."

He frowned at her, his eyes flickering as he tried to process what she had said. She watched him for a long moment but he didn't look at her again. He was gone. Descending into his mind palace to try to catalog love.

She wanted to step closer and see those eyes focus on her. Wanted to drag his lips down to hers and _show_ him. Wanted to push him back on the stairs and touch him until the frantic pace of his mind slowed to only her fingers on his skin and her mouth blazing a trail down his neck. She had never wanted something so much in all her life.

"Goodnight, Sherlock," she murmured.

Molly didn't bother waiting for a reply as she closed the door quietly behind her.

The harsh light of the moon was bright as she walked away from the man who did not love her. Molly pulled her coat tighter around her neck with one hand and hailed a cab with the other. The black car pulled up to the curb smoothly. She didn't glance at her phone as she slipped into the seat and gave the cabbie her home address. Molly leaned back against the leather seat and silently watched Baker Street slide away.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Sherlock slipped inside the heavy double doors and paused to shake the rain off his collar. The pulsing lights of the ambulance casting eerie red shadows in the dark hallway all around him. Although it had been several weeks since his last visit to Bart's, the paramedics in the parking lot had barely spared him a glance as he ducked into the hospital's back entrance. The sight of the consulting detective visiting the morgue, even in the dead of night, was nothing new.

Sherlock spared a glance at his watch—not much time now.

The click of his shoes echoing loudly in the empty corridor as he strode toward the lab. He had texted Lestrade the final deductions about the case 8 minutes ago. At this late hour, with the absence of traffic and considering the slight delay from police department's general incompetence, Sherlock deduced that he had exactly 9 1/2 minutes to get Molly out of harms way. A sufficient time buffer.

Still.

He quickened his step, trying to ignore the cold lurch of fear that accompanied the thought of Molly being in danger.

It wasn't as if he had purposefully been avoiding the morgue. Lestrade's last case had been fascinating—at least a 9, but it hadn't brought them to Bart's. This wasn't unusual but according to John, Molly _was_ intentionally avoiding Baker Street.

He turned the first dark corner. The truth was that he hadn't even noticed Molly's absence from their flat until the case had resolved in John and him following the suspect off a bridge into the Thames. But once John pointed it out, Sherlock couldn't stop noticing.

Her absence was an inconvenience to John and as a result for him. He was without his blogger again tonight because John had to mind Rosie for the third time this week. It was unacceptable.

Besides, he had gotten quite used to having Molly Hooper around. After Mary died, she had become somewhat of a fixture at the flat. She had a habit of nagging him to eat when on a case and moving his tea when it became cold which was irritating but somehow she had slowly become as much a part of his life as the damn deerstalker.

She had a way of standing in the window and singing quietly to Rosie as the baby fell asleep in her arms each night. She did not have the most beautiful singing voice. But there was something about the way she would rest her chin on Rosie's blond curls, her voice low and sweet, that made him stop and listen every time.

 _All those complicated feelings, Sherlock…_

Annoyed, he waved the memory away. The morgue was just ahead. He wasn't apologizing again. John had forgiven him a hundred times, Molly would too.

He paused and swiped his phone open with a thumb, 7 minutes now.

From down the hallway came the muffled but distinct click of the outside doors swinging shut. Someone had come inside.

Sherlock stopped to listen. For a moment, the basement was as still as a tomb and then from somewhere in the bowels of the hospital, the heat kicked on with a soft thrumming. He strained to hear over the soft roar, but there was nothing more.

Maybe a false alarm then. Maybe just the boys bringing Molly a body down to the morgue.

Footsteps—soft but steady making their way towards him.

Sherlock held his breath. The footsteps were accompanied by the faint sound of humming.

Whoever was moving down the hallway toward him was humming—low and off key. It was a child's song, the sort taught to snotty nose toddlers standing in a circle on the playground. There was something off about the sound, something that made him think of Eurus in her stone cell. Something that spoke of madness.

Sherlock slipped off his dress shoes and kicked them under an abandon stretcher. From far down the hallway, the humming man giggled—the sound skirting the edge of insanity. And moved closer.

He turned and ran, his coat billowing behind him, moving as silent as possible on his stockinged feet. Two quick lefts and then another long dark corridor, one of the florescent lights flickering as he swept passed.

The tuneless humming chased him.

He slid to a halt at the morgue door, flailing his arms inelegantly to stop himself.

Molly didn't look up. She was lifting a liver out of the open body on the autopsy table and setting it on the scale. Safety glasses were perched on the top of her head along with three pencils which stuck haphazardly out of the back of her ponytail like some sort of poorly constructed bird's nest. Completely unaware of the drama about to unfold, she squinted at the number on the scale and then made a note on her clipboard.

Something shuffled at the far end of the hallway, and Sherlock lifted his head to hear better, his body tight with tension. The humming man had stopped humming.

He was out of time.

Sherlock slipped into the morgue and hit the light switch on the wall, plunging the room into total blackness.

Molly squeaked. Metal clinked loudly as she dropped her scalpel. Sherlock took three long strides over to her, using muscle memory to guide him through the dark. He grabbed her arm and yanked her towards him. He heard her teeth snap together as he slid his arm around her waist and lifted her completely off the ground. For a moment shock made her pliant against him, and he used the time to pin her hands to her sides.

He felt rather then heard her suck in a huge gulp of air. She was going to scream. Hoping she would forgive him later, he slapped a hand over her mouth and started to drag her backwards toward the supply closet. Molly went stiff in his arm. She drove her elbow into his ribs, and he grunted. Sparks flashed in front of his vision, but he grit his teeth and held on.

She was wild in his arms now, and he could smell the sharp tang of her fear. It occurred to him that he might have miscalculated the situation. If she hadn't given up on their friendship yet, he was sure she would be done with him now. She was going to kill him for this.

Molly threw her head back, her skull connecting with his nose with an audible crack. He gasped as his vision swam but didn't loosen his grip. He didn't dare.

The humming had started again, alarmingly close, and Sherlock finally place the song. London Bridge—how predictable.

Through the morgue window he could see the bobbing light of a flashlight beam swept closer. Another lilting giggle. He kept moving, his arm a tight band around Molly's ribs, her heels scraping the ground. He almost shouted in relief when his hip hit the closet doorknob. She let out a muffled shrieked behind his hand as he hauled them both inside.

He pulled her back roughly against him, toeing the door mostly closed.

"It's me," he hissed in her ear, keeping one eye on the approaching light. She must have recognized his voice immediately because she instantly relaxed against him, and he had moment to wonder what the hell was wrong with Molly Hooper. Wondered why she still bloody trusted him after everything he had put her through.

She let out an almost inaudible gasping sob as he cautiously loosened his grip. He expected her to turn in his arms and demand an answer to the manhandling, but she melted back against him, tilting her head back against his chest.

"It's me Molly. I've got you," he repeated—softer this time, his lips brushing her earlobe. She shivered. He felt it because she was pressed tightly against him, her back against her chest, the curve of backside pressing against his thigh. Even in the dark, he could see the panic flutter of her pulse just below her jaw.

It would be only moments before a madman pushed his way into the morgue but suddenly all Sherlock could see was the soft curve of her throat. He lowered his head, his mouth hovered a breath away from her skin as he waited in the dark.

Molly was warm against him, and he was suddenly desperately aware of everywhere their bodies touched. He couldn't remember the last time he had been this close to another person. He should have hated it. Should have hated her touching him so completely. But he didn't.

No, he most certainly did not.

He wanted to taste her. Wanted to press his lips to her skin, and run his tongue across her frantic pulse. Wanted to hear the surprised little gasp and the strangled sound of his name on her lips. The need for it burned in his gut. But he couldn't. _Wouldn't_.

Sentiment was just a chemical reaction in the brain. An animal instinct made obsolete by centuries of evolution. It wasn't _real_.

He lifted his head.

Molly took a long shuddering breath, and he realized that she had not been immune to the turmoil that had just ripped through him. That even without looking at him, she had seen through him the way she always did. It had only been the most fleeting moment of weakness, but she had felt the battle. And the decision.

She stepped away from him, out of the circle of his arms. And he let her.

The morgue door creaked.

Molly turned but Sherlock put his hand out. Her eyes met his in the dark and he held up a finger to his lips. She nodded.

He pressed himself against the wall so he could watch from the crack in the door. The humming man shuffled into the lab. His song now punctuated the occasional burst of manic laughter. Molly's eye's widened in alarm.

She slid back in front of him, peering through the door crack so she could see too. This time all Sherlock's focus was on the man in the other room as he pulled open one of the morgue drawers. The madman lifted the sheet to look at the body before muttering angrily to himself and opening another drawer. As if he were shopping for socks or ties. Only with a gun in his hand.

The humming man was wearing a suit. Dark grey tails actually, as if he had been on his way to a wedding when he was suddenly overcome with the urge to visit the bodies at the morgue.

The tuxedo was expensive and carefully tailored but rumpled. There were dark rings around the armpits as if it had been worn many times and then discarded on a dirty floor between uses. Rich then, but unstable, Sherlock deduced. Most likely successful at one time until mental illness had dragged him into lunacy.

The stranger pulled open a third drawer and giggled to himself when he drew the sheet down, to reveal the body of an elderly women. Molly stiffened as he patted the corpse's silver hair and bobbed his head gleefully.

Sherlock could feel Molly's eyes boring into him as the humming man transferred the old lady's body to a stretcher, but he just shook his head at her. He wasn't about to look away from a madman with a gun who stood only meters away from where he was hiding, unarmed, with Molly at his side.

"Sherlock," Molly hissed.

He gripped her upper arm as the humming man started toward the door with his morbid prize. "Quiet," he breathed. She complied to his command only until the man's back disappeared down the dark corridor before she shoved him away.

"What. The HELL. Was that?" she hissed, her hands curling into fists.

Sherlock glanced mildly at the still swinging morgue doors. If he calculated properly, Lestrade should be apprehending the suspect in the next 47 seconds.

"That was James M. Finch."

Molly took a deep steadying breath, speaking slowly like she did when she was contemplating his own murder. "And what does James Finch want with poor Mrs. Boyle's corpse?"

Sherlock clasped his hands behind his back. "He likes to borrow them to…"

"Oh god no…" Molly squeaked, her hand going to her mouth. "Poor Mrs. Boyle," she muttered.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, Molly's false deduction clicking. "No." he said. "Not _that_ , thank god." He cleared his throat, "Mr. Finch likes to dress up ladies and, um, have tea with them."

"Sherlock Holmes is that a euphemism?"

"No!" he repeated. Molly's shoulders relaxed a touch.

From out in the hallway came the pound of feet and a sudden sharp shout. Sherlock waited for gun fire but there was only loud girlish sobbing followed by the familiar rattle of handcuffs. Lestrade was 30 seconds early this time. Maybe the rubbish police department was getting better. It had only taken ten years.

Sherlock reached for the door handle. "Don't even think about it." He froze at the simmering rage in Molly's voice.

Oh. They weren't done here.

"Let me get this straight, you arrogant...ma-manipulative...god-goddamn COCK," she fumed.

He turned back to her slowly. He was used to being called names. John had practically made it an art these past few years. But not Molly. Even when she was yelling at him, there was a softness in her voice that told him that a part of her would never mean it.

There was nothing yielding in her eyes this time, even in the dark he could see the spots of rage that colored her face. She was furious. He shifted uneasily.

A muscle in her cheek twitched, and she breathed out hard through her teeth. "You knew...you knew that a mad man with a gun was coming to the morgue and instead of texting or...or calling to, I don't know, WARN me...you barge in here and scare the piss out of me!" With every word, her voice rose until she was most certainly shouting.

He met her eyes cooly. "You haven't been answering my texts," he retorted.

Molly threw up her hands, her eyes blazing. "I thought you were here to murder me, Sherlock! I genuinely thought I was about to die. A quick phone call to tell me would have been NICE!" She shouted the last word.

She stalked forward, her finger poking him in the sternum. He winced. "And for the record, I haven't been answering your damn texts because you, Sherlock Holmes, are a cold heartless..."

Her words trailed off and she bent her head, her small hand a tight fist on the center of his chest. She shook her head. "God, I hate you." She let out a small strangled sob and swiped angry tears away with the back of her hand.

"I know," he said softly.

She looked up, her eyes swimming. "All you do is take," she said, her voice quiet now. He wanted to look away, the raw edge of her pain making him feel unsteady as if they were both standing on a sheet of cracking ice. She frowned and searched his face as if he were a problem she could solve. "You take and take and _take_. From everyone. From all of us-until we are just empty husks following you around."

He thought of John, looking up at him from over the body of his dying wife and felt something in his chest rip open. He hated this. Hated the way she could burrow right down to the darkest part of him and drag things to the surface that were better left buried. He swallowed around the hard knot in his throat, but Molly wasn't done.

"No more," she muttered, almost to herself. "It's my turn to take."

She lifted her chin, and Sherlock saw hard determination sharpen in her eyes. His body tensed. He recognized this side of Molly. A side that most people overlooked.

 _You say it first..._

 _Molly..._

 _Say it, Sherlock..._

Molly slid her hand from his chest and cupped the back of his neck, her fingertips curling in his hair. He froze. She stepped a fraction closer, stretching up on her toes, her body brushing against his in a way that made every nerve in his body vibrate like a violin string.

His hand snaked out and grabbed her hip, but she kept coming until she was so close that he could feel her heart stuttering against his.

His fingers tightened painfully on her hip. " _Don't,_ " he ground out, his voice a low growl of warning.

She touched her lips to his.

He didn't move, didn't respond, didn't _breath._ But Molly didn't seem to notice. Her mouth was achingly soft as she kissed him, her lips ghosting over his before pulling back and then coming back for more. It should have been chaste. Her skin barely skimmed against his, but it was like a match had been lit in his gut, embers crackling just below his skin. She took his bottom lip between hers so gently that his eyes drifted closed.

Something hidden in a dusty dark closet in a forgotten passage of his mind palace shifted and stirred. She pressed closer, the soft swell of her curves touching him everywhere. He grit his teeth but did not stop her. His breath was uneven as he waited for Molly to pull away. As he waited for Molly to stop _taking._

But she didn't stop. Her lips danced lightly, relentlessly, against his. He was cold marble under her onslaught but she didn't stop. The moment seemed endless, and there was nothing but white hot noise in his ears. She nipped at his top lip with her teeth, and he couldn't help the jolt that ran through him. He felt her smile against his mouth, soothing the spot with the flat of her tongue. He pressed the palm of his free hand hard against the rough wall behind him.

The warm tip of her tongue brushed along his bottom lip-sipping, tasting. He didn't move, but desire was uncoiling low in his gut, liquid and molten. The taste of longing was sharp in the back of his throat as he willed his muscles to stay still. He swallowed a moan when her hand settled on his the curve of his waist, her fingers slipping under his shirt to trace along his hipbone.

This was a battle. A battle of the mind. And Sherlock Holmes did not lose a battle.

Molly sighed against his lips. The hand in his hair drifted down the length of his jaw until her thumb gentle touched the corner of his mouth even as she continued to kiss him. He inhaled sharply at the sensation. Her tongue darted into his mouth, running along the sensitive skin on the inside of his lip before sweeping in further. She tasted sweet. He shifted his head ever so slightly, giving her better access. Her tongue met his. The dark hidden thing buried in the corner of his mind roared to life.

The kiss deepened, and he was helpless against her assault. His mouth moved over hers hungrily as he tried to memorize the feeling of her lips. She made a desperate whimpering sound that was like a shot of pure cocaine straight to his heart. Something inside of him let go.

The hand that had been gripping her hip slid inside her shirt to the small of her back. Her skin was impossibly soft against the rough callouses on his fingertips and he suddenly wanted to know if it would be as delicate and silky under his tongue. If she would arch her back and make quiet needy sounds while he tasted her. He wanted to know, _had_ to know.

He leaned against the wall, widening his stance and pulled her hard against him. She gasped into his mouth as their bodies molded together, and he swept his tongue inside her mouth. Her fingers fisted in his hair. She was so sweet, the remnants of strawberry chapstick lingering on her lips. Lust rocked through him at the taste of it, the feeling so foreign that his mind barely recognized it.

But his body did.

Sherlock felt himself slipping. And he didn't care. He was falling and it didn't matter.

 _We both know it's not the fall that kills you Sherlock, it's the landing..._

His mind slowed until there was only Molly and the taste of strawberries and the way she fit into his arms. Then she said his name, it was low and strangled and full of want and Sherlock was completely lost. His hand dipped down and pulled her against where he...

"Sherlock? Are you in here you bloody git?"

At the sound of Lestrade's voice, Sherlock ripped his mouth away from Molly's and pushed her away hard. She stumbled backward but caught herself against the wall opposite. Her eyes were huge in her face, her breath coming out in ragged gasps. Her dark hair had somehow gotten loose from her ponytail and it tumbled wildly around her face. She pushed it back with a shaking hand. She looked wrecked.

Not good.

 _Yeah, a bit not good mate._ Sherlock tried to ignore the John in his head but cold fingers of fear were stealing around his heart.

He was holding something. Molly's hair tie. The sight of it twisting in his trembling fingers sent a bright surge of panic shattering through him like shards of glass. He must have pulled it out of her hair when he was kissing her, the palm of his hand, in fact, remembering the silky feel of those long strands sliding through his fingers. What was happening to him?

Relying on the acute survival instinct that had saved him and John a dozen times, Sherlock plunged into his mind palace, never taking his eyes off Molly. It took only a fraction of a second to access the closed room of his mind that enabled him to face down killers and psychopaths with cool indifference. In relief, he drew the knowledge out and wrapped it's cold logic around his shoulders. He immediately felt his pulse slow and his breath even out.

Molly was watching him with those beautiful clever eyes, her own breath slowing as she waited. He couldn't let her see what she had done to him.

John thought didn't understand sentiment. And maybe he didn't. But he did know that Molly-sweet, strong, surprising Molly-didn't deserve to be loved by a sociopath. He would destroy her.

When he held out the hair tie, Sherlock's hands were steady. "Pull yourself together, Molly," he said, his voice cold and detached. "Don't let Lestrade see you like this..it's how reputations get ruined."

She straightened at the tone, her eyes narrowing. "What the hell is that suppose to mean?"

Anger. That was good. That was safe.

She reached for the small rubber band, and he did not react when her fingers brushed his.

He buried his hands in his pocket, and studied her. "It means that you have called in your debt, Doctor. You have _taken."_

She flinched.

When he spoke again, he wished the taste of strawberries didn't linger on his lips. The words were like poison in the back of his throat, black and hateful, but he had to say them. He let his gaze flicker over her in disinterest.

"I do believe we are even now Molly Hooper. I hope you enjoyed what you paid for."

He turned his back, too much of a coward to see what his words had done to her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed so far! Couple things: I'm trying to keep the characters as true to their nature as possible, so no Sherlock running into Molly's arms after being forced to say I love you. He's an ass and blossoming feelings are not going to change that, which is why we love him. Slow burn is better anyway-it hurts so good.**

 **As I'm sure you can tell, I'm not British. My grandmother was, so I did grow up with mushy peas and having my elbows smacked off the dinner table. I've been to London several times, but ya'll will definitely notice the language differences. ;) Also, I took liberties with the English countryside. Sorry about that. Last, please leave a review if you have the tiniest minute. Thank you! Thank you!**

Chapter 4

"We need tea," Sherlock announced.

Molly grabbed the door handle as the car swerved abruptly into a petrol station, banging the side of her head sharply against the window.

"Bloody hell," John cursed as Sherlock bumped over the curb, and they screeched to a halt diagonally between two parking spaces. Molly's teeth clicked together as the car lurched to a stop.

She wondered, not for the first time, why she had agreed to help Sherlock with a case out in Hampshire. Considering the thick tension in the air, she was quite sure this little field trip had been Lestrade's idea. Some sort of favor, John had told her. She must be a glutton for punishment. Tagging along most certainly did _not_ have anything to do with the handsome consulting detective who was tapping his long fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

Sherlock threw the car into park and spun around in the drivers seat, pinning her with his gaze. "Tea?"

"We only left the flat 15 minutes ago," she protested weakly, rubbing her head.

He dismissed her with a wave and turned to John.

"You are an idiot," John said mildly. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at his friend and then jerked the car door open, sweeping away in a flurry, his coat billowing dramatically behind him.

Molly stared after him as he disappeared into the small convenience store. John sighed. "He's been acting strange this week."

Molly snorted. John chuckled and glanced back at her, "And yes, I am aware of exactly how ridiculous that sounds."

Through the plate glass store window they watched as Sherlock stalked toward the front register with an armful of crisp packages and a steaming to-go cup, dumping them unceremoniously on the counter.

John shook his head. "He's been composing again. At all bloody hours. He's brilliant on that damn violin, but I haven't seen him this consumed by it since…well, in a long time. I thought it might be because of Eurus…because of what happened in Sherrinford, but somehow that doesn't seem like the problem. I just can't put my finger on it…" he trailed off, his brow furrowed.

Inside the store, Sherlock was gesturing angrily at the man at the register. The clerk stiffened, his right hand slipping below the counter. Molly sat up, glancing nervously at John who tensed and muttered something under his breath but didn't make any attempt to move.

"Something's wrong, Molly," John said, almost to himself, his eyes never leaving the window.

Inside, Sherlock straightened to his full height, flicking his collar up as he narrowed his eyes at the clerk. John sighed. "I'm a little worried despite myself. I can usually work out what has gotten into him but this time…"

John leaned back in his seat as the man in the store pulled out a battered old cricket bat and waved it at the consulting detective. Sherlock just flattened his palms on the counter, leaned forward and bared his teeth at the clerk. It was not a pleasant expression.

Molly shifted nervously. "Uh, shouldn't you…"

John shook his head, clearly not concerned about the drama unfolding in the small store. He draped his arm over the back of his seat, his fingers tapping out a nervous rhythm on the drivers headrest lost in thought.

Sherlock had bent closer to the clerk, talking to the man like they were old friends. Whatever insight the detective was providing didn't seem to sit well with the store owner because his eyes widened in alarm, and his hand tightened on the cricket bat.

John didn't move.

In a moment of unnerving clarity, Molly realized she was getting a glimpse of what it was like being part of Sherlock's every day life, not just someone lurking on the edges. John was just a planet orbiting the brilliant but spectacularly unstable star that was Sherlock Holmes. She wasn't sure how he put up with it. How he could stop himself from being swallowed up by the madness and brilliance.

And yet. Molly couldn't seem to shake him herself. She had tried, god she had tried, but she couldn't seem to stop herself from falling right into the tight pull of his gravity every time he was near. Her insides were so twisted with wanting him that she couldn't seem to fill her lungs anymore. She wondered if a person could suffocate from longing.

And now that she had tasted him? Now that she knew the fever that burned just under his skin, no matter how much he denied it? Molly knew that she hadn't imagined the white hot flash of desire that ripped through him. And even though he would be horrified to know it, she had fading fingertip shaped bruises on her hips to prove it.

She had seen his face after he had shoved her away. Seen the panic and lust in the color on his pale cheeks and the dark edge in his eyes. A person couldn't fake a look like that. Not even Sherlock.

He had been shattered.

Molly leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window and wished she had never met Sherlock. Luminous, dazzling, and fucking infuriating Sherlock Holmes.

John's fingers continued to tap out a nervous beat on the back of the seat. He was still talking, oblivious to Molly's mutinous thoughts, "…we haven't even had a good case—nothing over a 6—but he hasn't been eating at all. Nothing but tea and nicotine patches. Even Mycroft's been pestering me about it. I don't think he's—"

John paused. Through the window, they watched the store owner swing his bat wildly toward a certain detective's dark head. Sherlock ducked, coming up on the other side with such casual grace that it did uncomfortable things low in Molly's belly.

Sherlock grabbed the man's wrist and twisted hard, catching the bat easily as the clerk released it with a silent yell. In two smooth movements, he flipped the weapon in the air and clocked the man on the side the head. Molly had been around the crime fighting duo long enough to know that Sherlock had checked his swing at the last minute, but the clerk fell like a stone anyway.

"I don't think he's slept in four days," John continued in the same steady tone he always seemed to use. Molly blinked at the back of his head. "He's using again. Or that's all I can figure at least. Might need to have him pee in a cup at the lab when we get home, although he's going to be an insufferable if I suggest it. I searched the flat, but he's getting better at hiding things every time he relapses. He's just not himself, and I can't—"

"I kissed him," Molly interrupted quietly. John's fingers stopped tapping.

For a second they both just watched silently as Sherlock stood in the convenience store, his fingers flying over the keys of his phone. He was out of breath, his curls sticking up haphazardly and the bat resting lightly on the shoulder of his perfectly tailored suit. He was smiling to himself.

He looked exactly like the crazed lunatic he was.

Molly wondered what sort of chemicals were firing incorrectly in her brain. She should have been terrified to be in love with a man like that. But terrified was not the messages that her brain was sending to her body.

She wanted to bury down inside of his head and sort him out. Take him apart piece by piece until she found the beating heart hidden underneath the armor. She could sense it like a hidden river flowing soundlessly, deep under thick layers of hard unyielding granite.

John turned around in the front seat. He started at her for another second and then cleared his throat, "Did you say you, uh...you kissed him? Sherlock, I mean. The world's only consulting detective? Sherlock relationships-are-not-my-area Holmes?"

He glanced back at the store where Sherlock was now bent over the counter, rummaging for something under the register, the soles of his expensive shoes dangling a few centimeters from the ground. John looked back at her. "OUR Sherlock."

Molly tucked a piece of loose hair behind her ear and nodded, feeling the flush burning on her cheeks. "Yes."

John Watson, who had seen just about everything, blew out a hard breath. "Right. Okay. And how was…I mean, did he…did you…" He paused to swipe a hand down his face, muttering something indecipherable under his breath. It sounded like a prayer.

John looked up at the ceiling. "I wish Mary was here," he said softly. "She would know exactly what to say."

Molly laughed nervously, "John, you don't have to _say_ anything. I just didn't want you to worry."

John shook his head. "Listen, Molly. Sherlock is my best mate but I…that is to say, he…" John cut himself off with a curse, glancing up as Sherlock emerged from the store and stopped to adjust his coat.

He did not have tea in his hands.

"Just don't…" John sighed, running a hand through his hair. "He's not as immune as he wants you to believe….as he wants us _all_ to believe. Just…be careful with him, Molly." He stopped when Sherlock started toward them.

Molly was surprised. She thought that John would warn her away from his friend—convince her that a relationship with Sherlock would only end in heartbreak. She though he would say it, because it was true.

But John was different. He might be the only other person in the world who knew that Sherlock could get hurt. That he was capable of being hurt. And he was worried for his friend.

Molly studied the back of John's head. Loyal, strong, quiet John who had suffered the loss of his wife and befriended a lonely genius. He really was remarkable. Sherlock had no idea how lucky he was.

"I'll do my best," she promised, raising her voice to be heard over the ever increasing sound of a siren approaching.

John nodded once before Sherlock whipped the door open and slid back into the drivers seat.

He slammed the car door and turned to them grinning wildly. His smile abruptly faded, and he narrowed his eyes at John. "What is going on in here?" he asked. Molly swallowed, trying her best to look innocent as Sherlock's gaze flickered over them.

John just stared back, unblinking. "Nothing. What was going on in there?"

Two police cars careened to a stop next to them, lights flashing. "Nothing," Sherlock snapped as he started the car. Two officers leaped out of their vehicles, racing into the store with their guns drawn.

"Clearly," John responded dryly.

Sherlock shrugged. "The owner was running a human trafficking ring from the petrol station. It was completely evident from the bruise on the knuckle of his index finger and the marks on the calendar behind him."

"I'm not even going to ask." John said.

John held out his hand. Sherlock glared at it.

"What?" Sherlock protested.

"You know what."

Sherlock crossed his arms. "No. I most certainly do not," he replied in a huff.

"We are not going anywhere until you had over the pack of cigarettes in you left breast pocket." John said evenly.

Sherlock didn't reply, glaring out the window as one of the officers brought out the clerk in handcuffs. Two frightened girls followed, blankets wrapped around their shoulders. John sighed.

"It's quite sad how undeveloped your sense of deduction still is after all these years following me around, John," Sherlock bit out. John calmly kept his hand up.

"If you don't hand over those damn cigarettes right now, I'm going to take them from you, and I really don't want to embarrass you in front of Molly," John said matter-of-factly.

Molly huffed out a laugh and shook her head as Sherlock slapped the pack into John's waiting hand with a sneer. It was going to be a long road trip indeed.

xxxx

Sherlock leaned over the coroner's dead body and tried to concentrate. Focus was something he never had to worry about on a case before. He wasn't like other people—concerned about the cold mud oozing around their shoes or the sobbing widow leaning against the tree nearby or the pretty intern John was currently watching tie off the crime scene with bright yellow tape.

These bits of information—of distracting humanity—slipped through his consciousness, only breaking through to technicolor when it became important. Once the game was on, he only saw the game.

Until today.

Sherlock snapped his magnifying glass closed and straightened. He did not look at Molly, but he could sense her, like she was North to the magnetic compass lodged behind his sternum. She moved around the stretcher across from him and leaned forward, gently palpitating the swollen flesh under the dead man's jaw.

Molly bent over the body, all her attention on the corpse as she manipulated his head to test for lividity. She pried opened the man's mouth, peering inside with a small pen light. Her loose hair fell in front of her face. Making a small sound of annoyance, she gathered it in one hand and yanked it over one shoulder.

Even though he wasn't looking at her—didn't smell the clean scent of her shampoo when she moved closer, his gaze lingered on the exposed curve of her neck. He could see the gentle flutter of her pulse under her delicate skin and knew what it tasted like under his lips.

John cleared his throat quietly. Sherlock's eyes snapped up to John's, who was watching him with raised eyebrows. His friend smiled at him, and Sherlock almost snarled. He did not have to use his considerable power of deduction to know what was going on in Dr. Watson's simple mind.

Tedious. This was going to be a tedious day indeed.

Every muscle in his body ached from not sleeping, his shoulders tight from holding the violin for so long. Blisters were forming under the callouses on his playing hand, but he couldn't seem to stop even late at night when his eyes were hot and gritty. Even now, the music he was composing haunted him—a deceptively simple sweet song, but when the notes were woven together they were rich and beautiful, making his fingers ache with the complexity of the piece.

He dragged his attention back to the matter at hand, grinding his molars together. _Concentrate_

He stalked away, pacing in the grass as John and Molly exchanged idle useless information about the crime. Something wasn't right here. His skin buzzed from the nicotine patches lining his forearm. He felt light and heavy all at the same time. Not good for brain work.

He returned to the body and tented his fingers below his chin. The man on the stretcher was pale and bloated, still dripping from being hauled out of the river that rushed nearby. He wore fishing gear. Waders pulled up to his thighs and a soggy leather tackle bag filled with lures and mud strapped to his chest. Death by asphyxiation.

It was an open and shut case. Barely a 3 on the radar. Sherlock frowned. And yet…something about it niggled at his gut. Something was wrong, but he couldn't see it. Couldn't _focus_.

Sherlock shoved his hands into his coat pockets in frustration, scanning the body again. The man's eyes were blood shot and dirty water sat against his relaxed palate. His nails were clean. No signs of bruises around his neck or wrists. No struggled then.

He needed more data. Sherlock glared at the local police sergeant as she approached, the bright red flame of her curly hair barely contained in her ponytail.

"This man drowned," Sherlock snapped at the stranger. "Why the hell am I here?"

To her credit, the woman simply arched an eyebrow as she stopped at the foot of the stretcher.

"I'm not bloody sure, your Highness, but my boss said someone over at Scotland Yard named…" she paused, flipping open a spiral notebook before looking up again, "Greg. Sent you over here to have a look. He promised that you would be an…" she stopped again, clearly reading the last line straight from her notes, "Insufferable ass, but helpful."

"Who the hell—?"

"You know she means Lestrade, Sherlock," John interupted. "It's been at least 12 years. You know his bloody name."

Sherlock couldn't help the small smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth at John's weary tone. There was nothing that could cheer him up quite like annoying John Watson.

The sergeant, Erin according to her badge pinned to her uniform, popped a piece of gum in her mouth. "So?" she asked, her hand on her hip.

"Please tell me something that will make this case worth my considerably valuable time," Sherlock responded.

Erin shook her head in disbelief. "I thought you were here to tell _me_ something valuable. I've read about you and frankly, I'm disappointed Sherlock Holmes. I was all set to be impressed."

She laughed, and Sherlock realized that she was beautiful. Not just pretty because of carefully placed makeup or expensive clothes but a real natural beauty. The copper burnish of her hair and the dusting of freckles across her ivory skin would have been enough to make her striking. But it was her clever emerald eyes that would hold a man's attention. They certainly had John's. His blogger had unconsciously straightened into his military position, the way he only did when facing a psychopath on a murderous rampage or a gorgeous woman.

It was Sherlock's turn to clear his throat. John blushed.

Molly shifted awkwardly away from the stretcher, twisting the sleeve of her sweater in her fingers as if she could sense the undercurrent passing between the men and the sergeant.

Sherlock looked away from the stunning red head. Molly crossed her arms, smiling slightly when she caught his gaze. His heart thudded hard twice before settling back into its normal rhythm. He knew it was nothing but a chemical reaction based on evolutionary impulses to breed, but somehow the thought did not make him feel better.

She was ordinary. Brown hair, brown eyes, small breasts, average face. She was wearing a hideous bright orange raincoat that made his eyes bleed, and her hair was frizzed around her face in the humidity. She bit her lip and squinted at the corpse. He could tell she was trying to work something out. Her clever mind trying to solve the case he could sense lurking around the edges of this number 3.

And he couldn't stop looking at her. Couldn't stop _seeing_ her.

Erin was talking. He dragged his attention back to what she was saying, "…strange thing is that he was a champion fisherman. Won a bunch of contests as a teenager is what I heard." She glanced over her shoulder. The river behind them rushed and churned angrily. "The rain has been hard this spring. Flood levels most days, but I just can't figure how a man who spent his whole life in the water suddenly drowned." She frowned. "It doesn't sit right."

Sherlock would never admit it, but he agreed. "And what about the assistant M.E?" Molly asked quietly. Erin glanced over at her in surprise as if she had just noticed Molly standing there.

"Willy—my cousin. Somehow managed to graduate from uni couple months ago." She shrugged. "He's an idiot. I wouldn't let him within ten yards of my worst enemy with a scalpel."

Molly laughed and the sound made Sherlock's stomach clench. Infuriating.

"Just say you'll do the autopsy so we can get out this godforsaken town," Sherlock snapped at her. Molly just nodded calmly, ignoring his foul mood as always.

"Great!" Erin said, clapping her hands together. "It's getting late. Why don't you all get yourself settled in a motel and we'll have Dr. Bannen ready for you in the morning."

"That would be fine," Molly replied. "Thank you."

Erin blew a bubble with her gum. It broke and she peeled the gum off her lips before popping it back in her mouth. Sherlock grimaced.

"Sure thing," Erin said, tipping an imaginary hat. "Let me know if you want to apply for the position. We've been going through coroners lately and we have an immediate job opening if you—"

Electricity simmered through him, burning away the fog of exhaustion. The gears of his mind lurched relentlessly into movement. He grabbed the sergeant as she turned to leave. "What did you just say?" he demanded.

She frowned down at the fingers wrap around her arm. "I said that we've been going through coroners lately. Dr. Green was the family doctor and acting medical examiner for almost 40 years, but he died of a heart attack a couple months ago. Poor Martha was heartbroken, she found him—"

Sherlock cut her off, details clicking into place in his mind like a jigsaw puzzle. Oh, there was something to this case after all. He looked at John and grinned. "Statistically improbable," he said.

John nodded. The game was on.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Sherlock braced his forearms on the motel railing and flicked the ash off his cigarette, watching the embers drift down into the empty parking lot like slowly falling stars.

It was late. Through the thin closed door behind him he could hear John's familiar snore, a widowed father taking advantage of a night away. Sherlock took another drag, savoring the taste before blowing the smoke up towards the bright half moon. It should have been more of a comfort.

Sherlock ran his free hand through his already disheveled hair. The long day had put him on edge. He hadn't even bothered to change into his dressing gown when they had all retired to their separate rooms, knowing it would be useless. He'd just shrugged off his suit jacket before laying down on the top of the hideous rose duvet. But like every night this week, sleep eluded him. Instead he had just stared at the dreadful popcorn ceiling, his fingers twitching and his mind racing.

He should have brought his violin. Usually music helped dim the cacophony inside his mind, but this time the melody seemed to be a living thing trying to claw its way out of him. The song he was composing haunted him. Sherlock rubbed the back of his neck and sighed.

There was one thing that could help him, tucked into a sock in the overnight bag John had insisted that he pack. He had bought it after the incident in the closet, had gone straight from Molly's arms to a dealer with bloodshot eyes and bad breath. He didn't usually deal with the sort of men who lingered in dirty alleyways, with their black teeth and desperate eyes. Prided himself in having his drugs hand delivered to his apartment via grateful homeless network members. It was cleaner that way.

But this time-this time he would have crawled to the young man in the dirty beanie if it had been necessary. As it was, he had been shaking so hard that the dealer looked at him with sympathy as he pocketed the drugs.

He hadn't used them. The tiny bag of chemicals was attempting to burn a hole through his resolve, but his last trip down that path had been precarious at best. And he did not want to die.

The cigarette touched his lips again, and Sherlock held the smoke in as long as he could, relishing the buzz that was not even nearly enough.

Behind him, the light was on in Molly's room.

She was reading. He told himself not to look when he had passed her window, but the hideous mustard green curtain had been cracked just enough that he could see her propped against the head board with a book on her knee. She had the covers pulled up to her chin, and her hair was piled on the top of her head in a mess bun. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she turned the pages.

She looked lovely in the dim light of the bedside table. So warm and welcoming that he had turned on his heel and gone back to his room for the hidden pack of stolen cigarettes in his coat pocket.

Smoke curled around his head as he took another drag, the tip glowing in the dark. God, what was he doing out here?

But he knew. Knew the siren's call of addiction so well it was like an old friend, the tug of reason battling against the intoxicating pull of pure _want_. He was just another junkie hesitating outside Molly's door at 3 am, desperate for the fix only she could provide.

He ground his teeth together. He had beaten addiction off his doorstep more times then he liked to admit, and he would do it this time too. He could wait out the sleepless nights and the burning in his veins. Eventually the blinding, tearing, screaming need would soften to a whisper. Molly would give up on him and then things could go back to normal. Had to go back to normal.

Besides, the _real_ reason he was standing out here in the dark was that Molly could be in danger. Two pathologists dead in the last two months? Suspicious. But it was the scars on Dr. Brennan's left hand that had made him stay in this dreadful motel with its leaky sink and musty carpet.

He rolled his neck, trying to loosen some of the tension in his shoulders. It was so quiet that he could hear the distant murmur of a forgotten telly from the motel office below. The town's only stop light blinked in the distance, the orange flashing in the puddles on the empty street.

The quiet made him itch. He was used to the comforting hum of the city, the distant roar of traffic, and muted vibration of the tube underfoot. But here, it seemed like he was the only one awake for miles.

Sherlock flicked the ash off his cigarette, already deciding that he would have another—knowing he would hear about it from Mycroft later. The thought made him smiled up at the stars.

Something thumped behind him. He stilled, listening. A shuffle, like covers being thrown to the side. Molly, finally getting ready for bed.

Sherlock pulled the pack from pocket and tapped the bottom. He did not turn around. He tucked the cigarette between his lips and pulled out a lighter. He still did not turn around as he lit the tip, pulling until the end glowed. He closed his eyes, puffing a smoke ring up at the dim flickering bulb over his head.

Thump.

He turned around.

Her back was to him, but he could see her clearly from his place in the dark. She was hopping on one foot, pulling her sock off by the toe. She tipped awkwardly to the side, putting her hand on the bed to stop herself from falling. He shook his head, smoke escaping from his lips as he huffed out a quiet laugh. She tossed the socks into her open suitcase and before he could look away, she pulled her shirt over her head in one smooth movement.

He stopped breathing. She stretched her hands into the air, exposing the smooth line of her back and the soft curve of her hip.

His heart thudded. He shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be lurking in the shadows watching her. But he couldn't move, he was frozen to the spot, helpless. She reached back to unhook her bra, letting the pink lacy scrap of fabric fall to the floor. His fingers curled around the balcony railing.

Even from where he was standing in the cold, he could tell that her skin would be warm and yielding under his fingers. He wondered if she would shudder and sigh if he ran his fingertips down the delicate arch of her neck, skimming over the dip of her spine until he could circle his hands around her narrow waist. His palms tingled. He could practically taste how it would feel to come up behind her. To pull her naked body against his, pressing her against him in all the places he want to feel her. He swallowed.

Molly, unaware of being watched, yawned, resting both hands on the small of her back. She stretched, arching her spine and tilting her neck from side to side. From his spot in the shadows, he could see the soft swell of her breast. The slick rush of desire flooded his senses, hot and violent. Helplessly, he made a sound in the back of his throat.

Her fingers hooked around the waistband of her jeans, and he managed to wrenched himself away before he reached for her doorknob. Sherlock faced the empty parking lot, his chest heaving.

It was just chemistry. Dopamine rushing into his brain at the sight of a potential mate, ancient instinct he couldn't fight. Even with logic. He leaned hard on the railing, letting his head drop between his shoulders and tried to still his wild heart.

His eye caught the forgotten cigarette still pinched between his fingers, and he had never been so thankful to be a smoker before in his whole life. He took a long drag, ignoring the fact that his hand was trembling slightly. He pulled the smoke into his lungs like he had a million times…and inhaled all wrong, choking like a schoolboy. Sherlock sputtered and coughed, cursing under his breath.

But he didn't miss the sound of the door opening behind him.

"There are 17 different ways you can die from smoking," Molly said from behind him. "I read that on your blog."

Sherlock didn't turn around. His eyes watered but the burning in his lungs subsided, and he took a deep cleansing breath. He should go. Say goodnight and go back to his room to watch bad telly until the sun broke over the horizon. Anything not to be here. To be far away from the temptation standing behind him in bare feet. He cleared his throat. "I didn't know you read my blog, Dr. Hooper."

Molly padded over next to him and propped her elbows on the railing. Her shoulder brushed his and he had to grit his teeth to stop himself from moving away. Or leaning in—it was hard to tell these days.

"Someone has to," she said quietly. He felt her shrug. "Might as well be me."

He glanced at her sideways, "Hilarious."

She laughed softly. The sound skittered across his skin like a cold blast of air, raising the hair on his arms.

He decided that it was imperative that he do whatever he could to stop her from ever making that sound in his presence ever again. He would simply stop being funny.

Silence fell between them, thick and awkward and filled with unspoken words.

Across the street a boy on a bicycle rattled over the uneven sidewalk, holding a bag of newspapers. He tossed a paper at house without pausing. It hit the front porch with a muffled thud.

Sherlock watched the tip of his cigarette burn and waited.

"You hurt me," she said into the quiet.

Sherlock swallowed. He was not looking forward to this conversation, but once they had it, things could go back to normal. He flicked his butt into the air. They watched silently as it cartwheeled through the air to land on the damp pavement below.

"You knew I would," he responded.

"Yes, but I didn't know you would lie."

He straightened and looked at her sharply. "I have never lied to you."

She sighed. "Yes. You did." She turned, leaning against the pillar behind her. She worried at her bottom lip as she studied him. He wished that she would stop. It was distracting.

He had done a lot of horrible things to Molly recently, but dishonesty wasn't one off them. He glared at her. "I've lied to John more then I've lied to you!" he pointed out indignantly, not willing to examine _why_ that was true considering that John was his best friend. "You're just angry because you want something that I simply cannot give you."

He crossed his arms, sincerely wishing that the memory of his name on her lips wasn't echoing in the hollow of his chest.

Molly didn't respond, turning to look at the parking lot. He watched her profile. The moonlight painted her skin silver. She had changed into a long sleeved gray t-shirt with BART's printed across the front in faded letters. The collar was torn out and the ragged edge drooped over her shoulder exposing the hollow of her collarbone. Underneath she wore pink and purple plaid shorts that showed off the long lines of her legs. His chest tightened. In the soft light, she looked more like a woman then his pathologist.

"You pretended like kissing me didn't mean anything to you," she said without looking at him, her voice a little breathless. She pulled the sleeves of her shirt over her fingers nervously, twisting the fabric in her hands. "That wasn't true. I…I know it wasn't…" She swallowed and her last words were a whisper. "I was _there_. I know it wasn't true"

He narrowed his eyes at her, pushing down the tide of panic that was welling up in the back of his throat. This was delicate ground. He needed Molly. Couldn't imagine not having her in his life. But this dance they were doing couldn't continue.

Better to rip the bandage off then. Sherlock forced his face into an expression of brutal indifference, leaning casually against the railing opposite her. "You are mistaken, Doctor. I did not wish to hurt your misguided feelings." He shook his head and shrugged. "We are friends. So I gave you what you wanted."

"Liar."

He stiffened. There was no venom in the word. No plea. No accusation. That would have been easier. He could have fought those things.

Instead she said it gently, as if stating an irrefutable fact. As if he were a child who's parent had caught him in a fib. Molly called him a liar like she could see right through his shield of false apathy to the man who was haunted by the taste of her skin.

She stepped closer, letting her hand trail on the railing as she approached. His jaw ached from clenching it so tight. He couldn't look in her eyes, so he looked at the fine shell of her ear, and the hollow at the base of her throat and the delicate blue veins in the underside of her wrist. She still smelled like vanilla.

"Sherlock."

He grimaced, tearing his gaze away to stare over her shoulder. The air was mild, but he suddenly desperately wished he had his coat. He wasn't sure what to do with his hands. A car drove by.

"I won't kiss you again."

He looked at her. It was a mistake. Her dark eyes were warm and soft. He could drowned in those eyes. She hugged her arms around the middle, hunching her shoulders as if she were trying to hold herself together.

"I know it's not what you want,"she continued softy.

He frowned at her. People were so bloody perplexing. Facts were so much _cleaner_. He shook his head in confusion. "But you just said…"

"I know what I said."

She tucked a loose hair behind her ear. Her gaze flickered to his lips, and she might as well have touched him. His mouth burned. He wondered if she was wearing strawberry chapstick tonight.

"I do not understand," he said stiffly.

Without warning, Molly slipped her small hand up his cheek, her fingers curling at the nape of his neck. Every nerve in his body snapped to attention. Her thumb touched the corner of his mouth. He sucked in a breath. Her eyes dilated, but she didn't lean forward.

"I won't kiss you again Sherlock, because the next time?" The pad of her thumb drifted lightly across his bottom lip. Her eyes were dark mysteries in the shadows. "The next time _you_ will kiss _me_."

A muscle in his jaw jumped, using the last reserve of self preservation he had, he peered down at her cooly, speaking against the soft touch of her fingers on his mouth. "And why would I do that?"

She smiled then—a dazzling smile that turned her from a quiet mousey women that he would pass on the street without a second glance to something beautiful and rare. Her eyes searched his, and he couldn't have turned away if he wanted to.

She leaned closer, her breath sweet against his skin. "You'll kiss me, Sherlock Holmes, because I am a mystery you can't solve. I am the case that is slipping through your fingers and driving you mad." Her eyes flicked over his face before she stepped back, her finger tip dragging along his bottom lip as she released him. "You'll kiss me because I am the reason you can't sleep."

xxx

Molly slipped out of her motel room just as the first rays of sunlight stretched along the damp gray carpet towards her feet. She eased the door shut behind her and paused to listen. Nothing but silence from the two nearby rooms.

Against her will, her gaze skittered across the spot where she had stood with Sherlock just hours before. Her cheeks blazed. She turned her back, padding quietly down the stairs.

She could still seem him pinned against the railing, his eyes silver flashes in the dark as they widened at her touch. The feel of his panicked breath on her thumb.

She wasn't sure what had gotten into her. She had never been so bold.

But something about the way he had continued to lie, even as the tension in his body and the flicker of his eyes spoke a different truth. Something about the way he had pulled himself up to his full height, looking down at her with all the disdain he could muster—wielding his arrogance and intellect as a weapon…well, it had twisted the hurt inside her chest into something sharper and far more dangerous.

The whiskey from the mini fridge hadn't helped either.

She didn't normally drink alone, especially in dreary motel rooms with the man she loved sleeping in the next room. But she couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she felt those long clever fingers dance across her skin. So she'd had a drink and then another, trying desperately to dull the memory of his touch so that she could finally rest.

She had been reading the same page for the third time, her vision blurring slightly when she had lifted her head and seen him through the crack in the curtain. He had looked so lonely standing out there in the dark with smoke swirling around his head. A fact, most people wouldn't believe was possible from a supposed sociopath. But for some reason Sherlock had always let her _see,_ even when he didn't think she was looking. So she had opened the door.

Molly shook her head at herself. She really was a fool when it came to Sherlock. She turned a corner and spotted the low brick building that housed the towns only doctors office and served as a makeshift morgue. A handful of cars passed by as she crossed the quiet street. Dark storm clouds were threatening the opposite horizon, sunlight and darkness warring in the morning sky over her head. Molly rummaged in her bag for the key Erin had given her as she walked down the sidewalk.

She wasn't normally in the business of trying to seduce men who weren't interested in her. Especially a man as complicated as Sherlock Holmes. She was no Irene Adler, after all. But something had changed that night in the closet—or maybe it had started before that.

He was different since Euros, as if knowing about his sister had broken open something inside him that could never be buried again. She could feel the raw throb of his humanity beating just below his cold exterior. It terrified him. She had seen it last night in the color that had tinged his pale cheeks, and the heat darkening the prism of his eyes.

Something had changed for her too. Even if they both tried to pretend the phone call hadn't happened, that it was just another piece of his sister's mad ruse and hadn't meant anything. The truth was that she had confessed her deepest secret that day—shown him the tender underbelly of her heart. But even more devastating than her confession of love...she had revealed her hope.

And she couldn't take it back. Couldn't tuck her love back into the dark corners of her heart. It simply didn't fit anymore.

Molly blinked back tears, pushing the thoughts away. It was impossible. They were _impossible_. The faster she got this autopsy out of the way, the faster she could get back to her own life and away from Sherlock Holmes. The faster she could breath.

She skirted the building, heading for the back door. The morgue was always in the back. As if death was the world's own dark secret. She unlocked the heavy metal door, stepping over the discarded coffee cups and weeds to push inside. The lights were on in the short hallway. Molly frowned.

"Hello?" she called.

Molly jumped when a man stepped out from the nearby doorway. She might have squealed unprofessionally. Her left hand plunged into her purse, searching blindly for her phone. The man in the lab coat held up his hands, one of which held a clipboard, "Sorry! Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."

Molly's gripped her chest where her heart was still racing as the stranger smiled apologetically. The name on his tag read Doctor William O'Hara. Her death grip around her mobile eased. The man held out his hand, "You must be Dr. Hooper. Just popping in to get a look at the body is all. Didn't mean to scare you."

She shook her head, letting out a hard breath. "It's okay. I didn't expect to see anyone this early."

He nodded back, pointing at his name tag, "I'm Dr. O'Hara."

He was very young, straight out of university if she had to guess. But he was shockingly handsome. His short copper hair matched his neatly trimmed beard and the shade of the green eyes peering out at her from behind horn-rimmed spectacles were familiar.

"Willy?" she asked, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice as she shook his hand. His palm was slightly damp, and she resisted the urge to pull away immediately.

He blushed, the color bright against his pale skin. "William if you don't mind." He scowled unconvincingly, "You've met Erin then?"

She nodded and followed him inside the small room. He must have come early because the body of the former pathologist was already laid out on the single metal table in the center of the room. William put his clipboard down next to the autopsy instruments.

Molly put her bag down next to the open door, shifting nervously. Something felt wrong. "Sergeant O'Hara said that you needed me to do the autopsy?" she asked hesitantly.

William flashed perfectly white teeth at her, touching one of the sterile scalpels with the tip of his finger. He shrugged. "It's my first solo autopsy so I guess she thought I could use a hand. Why don't you scrub up and we can get started?"

Before she could respond, he crossed the distance between them, reaching behind her to grab the spare lab coat on the hook over her head. She stiffened. He was standing strangely close. She tried to shift away awkwardly, but her shoulder hit the wall.

He peered down at her and smiled again but there was no humor in the expression. "You know, the thing about family..." he said, shaking his head ruefully, "is that they can be so damn nosy."

Molly's fingers tightened on her phone. He leaned closer, invading her space. She could smell old coffee on his breath and the stink of stale sweat clinging to his skin. Her fingers found what she hoped was Sherlock's speed dial button.

"Take Erin for example," the young doctor continued calmly. "She's a meddling bitch. Always has been really."

He looked over her head, his brow knitting at some distant memory. Molly's fingers scrambled over her phone, praying that she was hitting the right keys. William glanced down and she froze. He frowned and grabbed her hand, his fingers grinding down painfully on the delicate bones in her wrist. She yelped. Her mobile clattered to the floor.

"See?" He whined, as if she had just proven her point. "It's women. Your kind can't help poking your nose where it doesn't belong-ruining everything."

His smile was a grimace now, and she could see the rage simmering just below his beautiful green eyes. Panic was a rabid animal clawing at her sternum.

He winked at her. Molly turned her head just in time to see his fist hurtling toward her face.

Pain exploded in her temple, bright fireworks sparking in front of her vision. Her knees buckled, and she felt his arm catch her, easing her to the ground with alarming gentleness. The world spun. She tried to yell, but Sherlock's name came out as just a strangled whisper.

Hopelessness was a sharp needle under her ribs. He would not have heard her even if she had screamed.

"He's not coming to save you, Dr. Hooper," William's disjointed voice floated down to her. "I doubt he'll even send flowers to your funeral. I've read about your consulting detective-not exactly one for sentiment is he? A year from now your friends will barely remember you. Molly Hooper-just a sad girl who died in a tragic accident. Maybe they'll raise a pint to you at the corner pub once a year. That's something right?" He laughed, the sound sharp and cruel.

Molly tried to answer. Tried to tell him that Sherlock would tear the world down to find her, but there was just pain and blackness. William patted her cheek. She tried to flinch away, but her vision narrowed. She struggled, clawing at consciousness until darkness finally pulled her down into its cold arms.

 **Thank you for reading and reviewing! xoxo**


	6. Chapter 6

**Thank you for reading and reviewing! Please excuse any grammar mistakes as this is written a bit on the fly.**

 **This chapter did not really go as planned. I blame the characters-** **they are shifty. I apologize in advance.**

Chapter 6

His chest was vibrating. Sherlock cracked open his eyes and blinked against the blinding light that streamed relentlessly over the spot where he lay sprawled on his motel room floor. Ignoring his ringing mobile, he draped his arm over his face and groaned.

He hadn't bothered closing the curtains last night because he hadn't expected to sleep. Not with Molly's words still rattling against his rib cage. Not with the prickly dare she had flung at him lodged like a stitch in his side.

She hadn't locked her door behind her.

When she left him standing in the dark hallway that smelled like smoke and vanilla—he hadn't heard the thunk of the dead bolt. He had been listening for it, he realized with something akin to horror. Listening for it with the force of his whole body, as if he could curl himself around the small sound until it healed what was broken inside him.

Even _he_ had understood what that unlocked door had meant.

And he had been tempted. God, he had been so much more then tempted. He had laid down on the floor, his hands flat against the rough gray carpet, and wondered—for the first time in decades—what it would be like to slip into someone's bed. What it would be like to touch someone in the dark until the world was just fading static. Until everything was just skin and teeth and whimpers in the night.

It wasn't the wondering that was dangerous though. It was the wishing.

So he had laid down on the motel room floor because it somehow seemed safer then even his own bed. Somehow the slide of scratchy sheets against his body seemed far too intimate. The floor was probably cleaner anyway, he mused as he stared blankly at the water stain on the ceiling.

His mobile buzzed again. It slipped off his chest as he sat up and hit the floor with a muffled thump. He scrubbed a hand over his face. He must have drifted off eventually. He couldn't have slept more then an hour. It probably would have been better to not sleep at all. His mouth tasted like an ashtray, and his head was pounded in time with the beat of his pulse.

"Sherlock?" John shouted from outside his door. He squinted at it. Maybe the pounding wasn't his head. John knocked again.

He staggered to his feet, swiping the phone off the floor. He glanced at it as he opened the door.

The most recent text was from Molly. He frowned.

"Since when do you sleep during a case, eh?" John asked, his voice strangely chipper. Sherlock grimaced at his friend who looked properly scrubbed up and clean, his eyes bright. John shoved a cup of something steaming into Sherlock's hands as he came into the room, the smell of coffee and a bit too much cologne wafting after him.

Sherlock rubbed his temple. John hadn't worn cologne since Mary died. His friend perched on the edge of the bed. "I thought we were supposed to be at the morgue at 9," he continued, "It's nearly ten till. We'll be late." Sherlock closed his eyes and tried to hold onto his sanity. Killing John would not help the situation.

Unaware of his impending murder, John pulled a breakfast sandwich out of the greasy brown sack in his hand and smiled at it. "Have you seen Molly yet?" he asked around a bite, "I knocked, but she didn't answer."

Sherlock's stomach lurched. He slammed the door and leaned against it, breathing through his mouth. John didn't look up.

John took another bite and hummed in satisfaction. There was color in his cheeks, and he tapped away at his phone as he drank his coffee. John chuckled at his mobile screen. Sherlock sighed. It did not take the world's only consulting detective to deduce that John Watson was conversing with a woman.

Yes, John was human. As prone to weakness as the next man. _As you_ , an unwelcome voice whispered in his head. He waved the thought away irritably, stumbling away from the door. His blogger looked so annoyingly happy sitting there enjoying his breakfast that Sherlock scowled.

John glanced up as if sensing his friend's dissatisfaction. His eyes widened a bit in surprise. "Jesus Sherlock, you look like shit, " There was a pause as he took a sip of coffee, watching him over the rim. "What is going on with you?"

"Nothing," Sherlock snapped, flinging himself into the nearby armchair. A broken spring poked painfully into the small of his back. He slumped down into the cushions and crossed his arms.

John arched an eyebrow in his friend's direction, and took another bite. "Molly then," John said easily. It was not a question.

Sherlock pressed his mouth into a thin line and slouched further down into the uncomfortable chair. He could practically hear John taking in his rumpled shirt and dirty hair. He sneered. He detested being deduced.

"She kissed you," John said.

Sherlock glowered at him. "That is none of your business."

John crossed his ankles, still studying him from a distance. "You know…"

"I do not want or need your opinion on this matter Dr. Watson," he snarled.

John ignored him, tapping a finger on his chin in mock consideration. "If I didn't know better, I would think you had feelings for her. Which is impossible isn't it? Because you are Sherlock Holmes, and Sherlock Holmes doesn't go in for that type of thing."

Sherlock glared at John and decided he would stop feeling guilty about that time he drugged his friend's tea and tricking him into thinking he was being chased by a rabid hound.

"Here's what I don't understand…" John continued, shaking his head. "The Woman? Janine? You weren't even really interested in them. They didn't matter to you. Not enough, at least. But Molly…"

"She doesn't matter," Sherlock interrupted, ignoring the truth that pressed against the back of his teeth. "She's just my—our pathologist."

"Liar," John countered.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at his blogger. It was the second time in less then twenty-four hours that someone had called him a liar. "This conversation is over. It is none of your concern, " Sherlock bit out, giving John the most withering glare he could muster.

John just smile and shook his head. Sherlock was tempted to stick out his tongue, but he suspected it wouldn't help his argument. He took a sip of coffee instead, trying to wash away the dreadful taste in his mouth. He grimaced when the acid hit his stomach.

His phone vibrated again. It was Lestrade calling. He pushed ignore, scanning the rest of his messages. Eight texts from Mycroft, two from The Woman and one from Molly. He hesitated a moment before swiping to check Molly's text.

Sherlock's heart stopped as he stared at the contents of the message—he was quite sure of it. There were two tremendous thuds and then just the hollow echo of his last heart beat echoing inside his chest cavity. John was talking but he couldn't hear, the whole world going slow and mute as he stared down at the three numbers on his screen—999.

There was only reason that Molly would text him those numbers. He looked at John helplessly, but his friend was distracted by his own phone, texting away as if the world wasn't crumbling around them. Sherlock opened his mouth but Vatican Cameos dried up on his tongue. He sat up slowly, the frigid wind of terror blowing away the heavy fog of exhaustion.

Molly was in danger. His hands started to shake. He thought of the shape of her mouth and the warmth in her eyes. He thought of strawberries. A dark pool of horror yawned open at his feet, and he wavered on the edge.

No. He couldn't— _couldn't_ fall apart. Not when she needed him. Sherlock closed his eyes and viciously shoved the terror into the darkest cell in his mind palace. He locked the cold ripping fear away with Moriarty, leaving it trapped behind the door with the shrieks of a madman.

He opened his eyes again. His pulse slowed. As the terror disappeared behind the padded door, the rage poured into the space it left behind. He bit the inside of his cheek, savoring the copper burst of blood that flooded his mouth. The dreary motel room came into crisp focus, every dust bunny and black smudge on the wall cataloging themselves into his head. He could see the whole history of the room written in his mind.

He needed to be Sherlock Holmes now. Everything he was, everything Molly thought he was had led him up to this moment. He took a deep steadying breath.

"Sherlock?" John asked, his voice urgent. He looked up to find John standing in front of him with his gun already in his hand. When their gaze met, John thumbed off the safety. "Tell me."

Sherlock didn't answer. Knew that he didn't have to. Not with John. He was out the door in two long strides, John close on his heels. He paused outside of Molly's room, tilting his head to listen. Nothing.

In one violent movement, he shouldered the motel door open ignoring the sharp pain that radiated up his shoulder as the door jam splintered.

The room was empty.

He had know it would be, but the fear inside of him hurtled against the door in his mind, the vibration making his teeth ache.

"Sherlock, where is she? Tell me what is happening," John said, his voice calm but deadly serious. The voice of a soldier.

"Quiet," Sherlock barked, throwing up a hand. "I need to _think_." John shut up and let him work.

He scanned the room, analyzing each detail. Discarding the mundane and filing away each important bits of data until the room gave up its secrets.

Bed unmade. Covers rumpled and tossed aside. She had slept restlessly last night, if at all. He didn't allow himself to remember why—not now. He touched the sheets. Cold. She had been gone awhile.

Suitcase still open on the floor. The pajamas she had worn discarded haphazardly on the top. She had been in a hurry. He would not think about how she had looked standing in those pajamas with the moonlight etched across the curve of her collarbone.

He strode to the bathroom. Her toothbrush was wet, the towel damp but not soaked. She had gotten up early and left.

Where would she go? Breakfast? He glanced down at the empty liquor bottles in the trashcan. He had smelled the sweetness of alcohol on her breath last night. No, she wouldn't want food then. No more then he had this morning.

There was only one other place she would go. He knelt down next to her overnight bag, digging in the top pocket. Her medical bag was gone. The one she traveled with, her own scalpel and magnifying glass in a small leather roll. He had seen her pull it out yesterday at the crime scene.

"She went to the morgue to do the autopsy early," he said, glancing up at John.

"Why?" John asked as Sherlock straightened.

The reason Molly had left wasn't important, but Sherlock had an idea what had gotten her out of bed so early this morning.

Guilt lay bitter and acrid on his palate. If he had done something that had put Molly in danger…or worse, if there had been something he should have done….He pushed the thoughts away ruthlessly. There was no room for sentiment here.

Sherlock didn't answer his question, instead showing him the message on the phone. John's whole body went rigid as he read the text.

"If someone fucking hurts her…" John hissed, his fingers tightening on the gun. There was murder in his eyes. Sherlock decided to forgive him for being so irritatingly happy earlier.

"You'll have to beat me to it, " Sherlock said as he turned to the door.

They ran.

He called Lestrade as they took the stairs two at a time and hurtled down the sidewalk. A cold sweat had broken across his forehead as they ran. The air was thick with humidity. He up at the sky where angry gray clouds boiled on the horizon. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Sherlock grit his teeth. Rain was bad. It washed away evidence. He ran faster.

By the time they reached the front door of the small brick building, he could hear police sirens in the distance. Lestrade must have called Erin. He swore. She would be nothing but a hinderance. He peered into the small broken window. The place looked deserted.

Sherlock reached for the doorknob, pausing only when John put a hand on his arm.

"Me first," John said, holding up his gun. Sherlock hesitated, but John continued as if reading his mind. "I'll let you. If whoever did this is in there….I'll let you." Sherlock nodded, and the fear rattled against the cage inside his mind.

He followed John inside, and knew instantly that she wasn't in the building. There was no logical explanation for how he knew. There was just an emptiness in the office that matched the hollowness that had taken up residence beneath his diaphragm. He breathed out. She wasn't here.

John slipped inside the tiny autopsy room. "Clear," he called. But Sherlock was already inside.

It was empty except for the corpse stretched out on the examination table. Sherlock touched the body. Warmer then it should have been. The sweet smell of rotting flesh lingered just under the stench of bleach. Dr. Bannen had been lying here for hours.

"She's not here Sherlock. Where is she?" John asked, scanning the space. Sherlock shook his head helplessly. He didn't know yet.

There was a screech of tires outside, and then the blare of the siren cut off abruptly. The calvary had arrived. It did not make him feel better. The minute they entered he would lose control. They would trample the crime scene. He was out of time. He had to figure it out NOW.

Sherlock clutched his head, spinning in the center of the room. Nothing seemed out of place. There were boxes stacked against one wall almost to the ceiling. The room was rarely used for its true purpose. The autopsy tools were lined up neatly beside the body. Nothing but crumpled coffee cups in the bin. Lab coats hanging…

His eyes focused in on the stark white coats. He lunged forward, pushing past John who stumbled out of the way. He leaned closer. _Blood_.

A fine red spray of it marred the lapel of one of the coats. At head level. Exactly 5'4" of the floor to be exact. He breathed in.

John peered over his shoulder. "Could be work related," John pointed out. "This is a morgue after all."

Sherlock ran a fingertip down the edge of the fabric, smearing the blood spatter. Molly's blood. "Not work related," he forced out through gritted teeth.

He touched the door jam nearby. There were three gouges dug into the wood. Three finger shaped gouges. She had struggled.

Fury poured into him, fire and ice trying to occupy the same space inside his veins. He swallowed against it. "Someone took her," he spat, his fingers curling into fists.

"Took who?" Erin demanded, striding toward them down the hallway with her right hand on her holster. She was in uniform. It hugged her body in a way that a professional police uniform was not meant to. John stood up straighter. She smiled at him. "John, what is this about?"

"Dr. Hooper has been kidnapped," John said, stepping in front of her to stop her from entering the autopsy room. Sherlock ground his teeth. It was a smart move on his friends part.

Sherlock turned his back, tuning them out. Whoever had taken Molly had also killed Dr. Bannen. Molly didn't have much time.

The fear shrieked. It had Moriarty's voice.

Sherlock pulled the sheet back, and did a quick reassessment of the body as John distracted Erin at the door. Nothing had changed. And yet he was missing something. How could he be missing something?

He slammed his hand against the side table, sending the instruments flying. They clattered to the ground. He could feel the minutes ticking by as he stood there not knowing. Unable to save her.

Sherlock took a ragged breath, pressing his fingertips against his eyes. Maybe it wasn't something he wasn't seeing. Maybe it was something that wasn't _there_. He stared down at the dead man's hand, where numerous scars marred his flesh. Not scars from his work as a pathologist. Old fishing injuries. Years of hooks accidentally embedding into his skin.

Hooks.

It came to him in a flash of understanding, like being hit in the sternum by a lorry. He spun on his heel. "The fishing pole," he demanded, grabbing Erin by the front of her shirt and dragging her forward. She yelped, and John grabbed his wrist. He did not let go. "Where. Is. The fishing pole?"

She slapped at his hand, but he just twisted the fabric tighter, his nose almost touching hers. "They found it last night!" she yelled "After you left, you bloody cock. Let go of me!"

"Where?" he snapped, letting go of her shirt. Her face matched the flaming color of her hair as she tried to readjust her uniform. Erin glared at him. "Where?" he hissed.

She pointed at the door behind her with a small sign that read: Evidence. He shoved her aside as he went inside.

"Was that entirely necessary?" John muttered from behind him.

There was only one fishing pole lying amongst the rest of the clutter on the counter. He picked it up, sweeping his fingers down its length, turning it in his hands. The hook was still attached to the end of the fishing wire. The reel was full, as if Dr. Bannen had drowned before he had cast his first line. Sherlock examined the hook. Relief flooded through him, cooling the raging flame of his anger a fraction.

He turned to Erin. "Your cousin Willy is responsible for the murder of Dr. Bannen and therefore, the kidnapping of Dr. Hooper. Where is he?"

Erin reared back as if she had been slapped, her beautiful green eyes widened. "What the hell are you talking about? How could you possibly know that from a fishing pole?" She looked at John in disbelief. "Your friend is out of his mind. Jesus, he really is some sort of psychopath."

John's mouth thinned, and Sherlock realized at once who John had been texting this morning. He shook his head. John really did have alarming taste in women.

"How?" John asked him simply.

Sherlock held up the hook. "Elementary. No fisherman would ever tie a knot like this. It is the sort of knot that is used for suturing—hastily done, if I might add—a master fisher would never tie a hook off like this. Therefore, this murder was committed by someone in the medical field. You said yourself that the town was in need of a doctors. Now certainly, there could be other people in the immediate area with the knowledge to tie a suture but none of them have access to this morgue. Ergo, Willy."

Erin stared at him, her mouth open. She shook her head as the information sunk in. Sherlock watched her, trying to ignore the fear that was screaming at him from inside its padded cell. His fingers twitched. He waited and breathed. "But he's an idiot," Erin muttered to herself.

Sherlock clenched his hands into fists in his pocket. He could practically feel Molly getting farther away. As if something painful inside of him was stretching thinner and thinner as every second passed.

"Where would he take her?" he asked urgently, resisting the urge to shake her only because of John's proximity.

She stared at them, the red leaching from her face until her freckles stood out starkly on her pale cheeks.

"He has a cabin."

* * *

Molly opened her eyes to darkness. She blinked but there was nothing to see. The world was vibrating. It could have been her head. She tentatively touched her temple and winced. Her fingers came back wet and sticky with blood. The ground lurched under her.

 _Oh God._ Every muscle in her body clenched. She touched the cold metal over her head. She was in the trunk of a car.

Her pulse pounded against the inside of her skull, the memories coming back to her in vicious gut wrenching waves. Sherlock smoking in the dark. The morgue. Dr. O'Hara and the madness in his eyes.

He had hit her. Oh dear God, he had hit her and now she was locked in his trunk.

Her head banged against the low ceiling as the car rattled along a gravel road. She pressed her hand to her mouth, fighting the nausea that burned in the pit of her stomach. It would not help her situation to vomit.

The air was so thick with the smell of spilled gas that her eyes watered. She tried to take a breath, gagging as the stench burned her nose. She coughed. Blinding white pain exploded in her vision, and she tumbled back into unconsciousness.

When she woke again, the car had stopped moving. She swallowed the panic that clawed at her throat. She had been beaten and thrown into a trunk by a murderer. That was bad. But whatever was going to happen when the trunk opened was going to be so much worse.

Turning on her belly, she scrambled around the dark trunk desperately. Surely there was something she could use as a weapon. A tool or a broken edge of plastic. _Anything_. She crawled around the tiny space, blindly searching every metal crevice with her fingers. Her thumbnail caught and tore. She cursed.

There was nothing.

Molly lay on her back in the dark listening to the rapid staccato of her panicked breath and tried to pretend she was Sherlock. He always faced danger with a cool indifference that she didn't understand. An indifference that she could sorely use right now.

She pressed her hands against the cold underbelly of the trunk that hovered just above her nose. Hot tears escaped the corners of her eyes and pooled in her ears. She was going to die. It would probably hurt.

Molly clenched her teeth around a sob. She was not Sherlock. She was weak and afraid.

And yet...

She had seen Sherlock's face, standing in her dim lab the night he had planned his own death. She had seen the quiver in his hand when he walked away from London and John and his whole life. And in a strange moment of blinding clarity, in the trunk of a murder's car-Molly Hooper _saw_. She saw the deception that Sherlock had worked his whole life trying to hide.

There was no outrunning fear. It was always right behind you; its hot breath in your hair and its boney fingers wrapped around your neck. Fear caught up with everyone-in the trunk of a car, or a back alley, or the roof of St. Barts.

He _had_ been afraid. But he had fought anyway. Fought and survived.

Molly touched her lips. They were damp with her own tears.

He had said her name that night in the closet. Whispered it against her skin over and over, her own name breaking against her heart like rough waves against the rocks.

She wasn't going to die today.

Desperate and frantic, she patted down her pockets for her phone. It wasn't there, of course. But her hand brushed against something inside her coat pocket. Hope twisted around her heart. She slipped a hand inside and shouted when her fingers closed around the car keys she rarely used.

There was a thump outside the trunk. Her fingers traced each key blindly until she found the small pocket knife she knew was there.

It had been her dad's. He had always carried it. After the funeral, she had worked it off his keychain and slipped it on her own. That had been years ago. She hadn't opened it since.

But there it was-tiny and almost useless. Molly flicked open the blade and touched it with her thumb. It couldn't have been more than an inch long. She tucked it inside her palm, the blade hidden against her wrist. She would only have one chance.

The sound of Willy's keys rattled against the metal near her head. She didn't bother cringing away although every molecule of her body screamed at her to run. There was no where to go. She took a deep breath.

She had a concussion. Nausea, blurred vision, headache. All the symptoms were there. But it didn't matter now.

She would fight. She would survive.

The tiny blade dug into her wrist. The trunk opened.


	7. Chapter 7

**Thank you to everyone who is reading and reviewing! Writing is a bit like being on an deserted island, so I appreciate the encouragement. As far as my love for cliffhangers goes, at least I'm not making you wait 3 years between chapters. Ha! This _is_ the Sherlock fandom after all. ;) Thanks again!**

Chapter 7

If she had been braver, Molly would have launched herself at William the second the light filtered into her cramped black cave. And God, she wanted to-wanted to bury her knife into the side of his neck or maybe into one of those beautiful emerald eyes, like James Bond or Sherlock Holmes or the action heroes that raced across her telly every Sunday afternoon.

But she was none of those things. She was just Molly Hooper. A unassuming doctor who just happened to cut open corpses for a living and liked lemon in her tea.

She was just that, thank you very much. So she cowered back against the musty trunk carpet, swallowing the furious rage that lay like poison on the back of her tongue. Just an awkward wisp of women—nothing to see here.

She cowered and clutched her secret in the damp palm of her hand. And waited, folding up her fear into a small square and tucking it behind the hard ridge of her sternum where she could feel it like a grain of sand rubbing against the pounding of her heart.

"Well, look at you," William cooed as he leaned his forearm against the rusty lid and grinned down at her. "You poor thing."

Molly blinked up at him, expecting the bright flash of morning sun but the sky behind William's head was a dark bruise, heavy with storm clouds. A burst of cold wind rustled his copper hair as he reached for her. She cringed away.

He smiled at her furtive movement.

So she whimpered. Because weakness meant survival. Because he had left her hands and feet unbound and the tiny freedom was the only thing keeping her from tipping into the dark hole of complete hopelessness.

And because there was no madness in his eyes. Somehow that would have been more comforting then the calculated ambition that turned his handsome face into a cold mask.

Molly didn't have to fake the tears that spilled over her cheeks. "Please don't hurt me," she croaked.

The bastard reached down and caressed the dampness on her cheek with one fingertip. Molly shuddered, bile rising in her throat. Willy shook his head. "Oh, I don't want to sweetheart. But you're in the way, don't you see?"

Molly swallowed. She did see. This was about power, like it was for practically every man she had ever met. For some reason the world was filled with men who thought they could warm their hands by the fire of ambition and it would fill the hollow places behind the meat of their black hearts.

So Molly Hooper lowered her eyes and let herself shake and cry and stammer. She let herself be small. It wasn't hard. She had been practicing being invisible her whole life.

But for the first time in her life, something inside her rebelled. A voice screamed inside her head at her to _fight_. To survive.

It was Sherlock's voice, of course.

It had always been him. Always _would_ be him. The brilliant broken genius who trusted her with his life.

She had been surprised the first time he had turned to her for help. But somehow, he had always seen something in her that she barely saw in her self. He told her with the storm cloud of his eyes and the stillness of his slim shoulders that she was strong. That she mattered. That she could survive.

And for the first time in her whole modest quiet life, she believe him.

Her fingers flexed around the knife in her hand, tightening around the hidden sliver of hope that cut into her palm. Thunder rumbled, close and just overhead.

William frowned at the sky. "We're running out of time aren't we Molly dear? Why don't you just pop on out of there for me, and we can get this over with," he said pleasantly, reaching for her arm. Molly tried to scramble away, and Williams face twisted. Suddenly, his fingers were winding into the long strands of her hair. He pulled and Molly yelped, grabbing at his wrist but he was already dragging her out of the trunk.

"I'm done being nice Dr. Hooper," William snarled, as blinding white pain ripped through her scalp. Her ankle caught the sharp lip of the bumper as he wrenched her out of the car. Molly groaned as she hit the ground with a teeth rattling crunch, the air pushed from her lungs in one painful whoosh.

William nudged her with his foot, as she lay gasping for air. "See what you made me do?" he asked petulantly. Molly stared up at the dancing tree tops and struggled to pull in once cool breath.

The knife burned in her hand and in her heart.

William glared down at her. And then she saw the gun.

Molly felt something hard and heavy settle into her veins. Her vision was still blurred from the concussion, but the gun was in sharp focus- all angles and sharp lines. She had seen her share of guns before, of course. But this one seemed different somehow. Like a black hole, it seemed to suck the light and oxygen out of the world. She couldn't stop seeing it. Molly whimpered and this time it wasn't for show.

She shook her head, biting the inside of her cheek to stop herself from shaking. William crouched down next to her. "Why are you doing this?" she managed between gasps.

She didn't care. Didn't give the slightest damn what this bastard's motivations were. But if he was talking then he wasn't using his gun.

William sneered. "All I've ever wanted to do was be a doctor. Respect and money-pillars of the community and the like," William told her, the gun resting on loosely on his thigh so that the barrel pointed casually at her face. "That shouldn't' be too much to ask. But in this town? No one thinks I can do anything. They treat me like the town idiot." Bright spots of red marred his pale cheeks. His green eyes flashed. "Went off to Uni. Earned my degree as well as the next chap, but they hired that blowhard Dr. Brennan over me. I mean, what the hell is that about? The mayor is my goddamn brother and the police chief is my cousin, and I still didn't get the job?"

Molly nodded as he continued to rant. Anything to give her more time.

That was all she had now. Just the slow tick of the clock matching the rhythm of her dying heart. Because she was dying wasn't she? Her whole life had boiled down to this moment. Now she was just a helpless passenger, hurtling toward the moment of her own death in a slow motion car wreck.

Her fingers tightened around her father's knife. She could feel the thin line of blood, hot and wet, trickle down the inside of her wrist. Molly took a deep breath. Maybe not completely hopeless.

"Listen," William said easily, poking her in the jaw with the cold metal of his gun. "I don't want to make this unpleasant for you. Why don't you just stand up and come with me into the cabin? It will be easier for everyone that way."

Molly didn't move, staring at the dark sky over William's head. She watched as the tops of the trees bowed down to the wind that howled around them. The smell of ozone tickled her nose.

"He will know," Molly rasped, trying desperately to stall. "He'll find me, and you will spend the rest of your life in jail." She lifted her chin. "If he lets you live that long."

William raised his eyebrows and then frowned in consideration. "You might very well be right Dr. Hooper." He shrugged, but Molly saw his finger tighten on the trigger. "I've gotten in a little deeper then expected," he agreed with a low chuckle, as if he were talking to himself.

A flash of lightning lit up the small clearing, and William glanced at the sky again as Molly struggled to sit up. He shook his head. "But sometimes you just have to see these things to the end—to _finish_ it. There's no real point in stopping now, is there?"

Molly grimaced when William grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. She didn't try to fight him. Her scalp still stung from her last attempt at defiance. She wavered on her feet, her stomach twisting with nausea. A fat drop of rain hit her forehead and dripped into her eyes. She blinked and looked around the clearing for the first time.

Her heart sank.

Dense trees and brush surrounded them on all sides, broken only by a narrow dirt road that disappeared into shadows. A ancient cabin squatted in front of them, looking as abandon and forlorn as she felt.

They could be anywhere.

Another drop of rain soaked into her shoulder. And then another. William cursed, pulling her toward the cabin more urgently just as the sky broke open with a flash that nearly blinded her, as if the lightening itself had ripped a hole in the clouds.

Suddenly they were drowning. The rain pounded around them with a deafening roar, turning the dirt into a brown river under their feet. Within seconds, she was soaked, her hair hanging like damp rags around her face and her shirt pressed against her like a cold second skin. She shivered as William tugged her forward, his fingers digging into her arm viciously.

The door to the cabin was hanging open—broken and dangling from one rusty hinge. Beyond it was a yawning mouth of darkness. Molly knew with a cold certainty that inside that cabin was her death. She could taste it.

Molly stumbled on purpose, falling hard on her knees in the mud. Rain streamed off her nose and chin like tears. Or maybe she was crying, it was hard to say.

She pried her fingers off the tight grip of her fear and let it loose inside her skin. Her voice wobbled as she pushed her wet hair from her face and looked up at the man who was going to kill her. "I can't," she begged. "My head…I...I think I've got a concussion."

William squinted down at her through the wet windowpane of his glasses and scowled.

"Get up bitch," he snarled impatiently, jamming the muzzle of the gun against her neck. He glanced over his shoulder as if he suddenly realized that his time was short. Or maybe he heard something.

Molly thought of Sherlock then. Thought about the ruthless determination that turned his beautiful face into something hard and dangerous. Thought about the quicksilver of his mind deducing each moment of her morning until it clicked together behind his changeable eyes. For just a moment, she could feel him rushing toward her, a brilliant comet falling relentlessly toward the earth.

She wondered if he heard the same ticking clock she did.

The rain fell heavier, a dull roar in her ears that seemed to fill the whole world. The gun cut into her skin. Time seemed to slow down. The torrential rain was like bullets against her face, each drop sharp and cold.

She had minutes, Molly realized with a slow sort of realization. Minutes before her own death.

Lightning lit up the clearing.

It seemed like a rather dramatic way to die, Molly mused idly. Rather dramatic for a mousey pathologist who spent her Friday nights curled up under a quilt on her favorite chair with a book on her lap.

She had spent some time thinking about how she would die—she was a pathologist after all. But she had always thought her own death would be quiet, just a slow fading out of existence. Hardly bothering anyone but her mother and maybe her landlord.

But this? Dying in the wet mud amongst flashes of lightening? No, she had never expected this.

William yanked at her arm. He was shouting now. Molly breathed in. Her heart slowed. She let her feet slip in the mire, and Willy lost his grip on her. He cursed again. Molly breathed out.

She felt it in the pads of her fingers first, where her hands were pressed into the cold muck almost up to her wrists. Her palms buzzed, as if there were a live electric wire hidden under the ground below her. The sizzling crept up her forearms, and buzzed around her heart. Her breath hitched. Molly sat up on her heels. She closed her eyes.

And the world turned white.

When she opened them again, black spots danced in her vision. She blinked. The lightening strike had been so close that she'd heard the crack of the tree trunk break before the thunder fell on them with heavy feet. The ground beneath her shook, the deafening crack so loud that she tasted it in the back of her teeth. But Molly wasn't listening.

She watched William.

He flinched as the thunder ripped through the clearing, and Molly felt the hard muzzle of the blackhole slide off the skin of her neck. Her ears rang in the hollow space that the lightening left behind, the thudding rain around them faded to a muffled whisper.

She breathed in and turned the knife in her hand as the moment slowed and stretched.

William's fingers were tangled in the fabric of her damp shirt, the pale expanse of his wrist exposed. She could see the blue rivers of his veins underneath the delicate skin. The drops of rain traced the vulnerable lines of his forearm. The knife was firm in her grip—the only real thing in her whole violent, terrible world. She breathed the blade.

Somewhere behind her she could hear the tree falling, the sound of it ripping and tearing through the underbrush was almost as loud as the thunder. The ground shook under her knees again.

William glanced away.

So he didn't see as Molly brought the small blade to the dark veins in his wrist with surprising calm. Didn't see as she made an incision where she knew it would do the most damage. Didn't see as she dragged the knife down his arm, splaying open his flesh like he was already a corpse on her table.

He screamed. The hand that was gripping her sleeve opened reflexively. Molly knew it would because she had sliced through the small tendons of his wrist and the bundle of nerves at the base of his hand.

The gun went off wildly as Willy fell backwards. Molly knew it was a gunshot and not another crack of thunder because the bullet hummed as it passed her face.

She was kneeling on the ground now, mud squeezing between her fingers as she watched William clutch at the long ragged wound in his arm. His fingers scrambled to stop the dark waves of blood that pulsed out of the long laceration. But he might as well have been trying to hold back the wild sea with only his two hands. His heart continued to beat, continued to push blood efficiently through his body and into the river of rainwater that flowed past his knees.

"Help me," he pleaded, his eyes wide and frantic in his pale face. He sounded confused, like a child who was being punished for something they hadn't known was wrong. His fingers scrambled at the lethal cut, the pink of his lips fading to blue as she watched. "You killed me," he said, his voice filled with wonder.

And Molly thought it was possible she had.

The basilic vein she had sliced through was a direct link with the rapid beat of his pulse. William held out his bleeding arm to her. He looked young and lost, crouched there in the mud with his life dripping off his fingertips and disappeared into the dark puddles around him.

She should have felt something. Should have felt anger or regret. Or pity. But she felt nothing. Calm had swept through her like the storm, washing away everything inside her until there was just silence in the small cathedral of her heart.

"Please," William begged.

Molly looked down at her hands as the rain washed away the blood and dirt and fear. She looked at her father's small knife cradled in her palm and listened to beat of her own heart mingle with the steady sound of the rain.

* * *

Sherlock threw the stolen police car into fourth gear, and grit his teeth as the tires fishtailed over a deep rut. The engine screamed in protest, but he managed to wrestled the car back onto the narrow dirt road.

John gripped the dashboard, his mouth set in a grim line as they careened around the next blind corner. But he didn't complain as hurtled down the road, just skirted the edge of control. Didn't so much as recoil when an enormous tree trunk took the side mirror off his door in a brief rain shower of reflecting glass.

And he wouldn't. Not John. Because the chase was on, and Sherlock knew that John Watson would follow him into hell. Had, on several occasions, in fact.

After all this time, Sherlock still wasn't sure what he had done to deserve the unwavering friendship of a man like John. But he was grateful all the same. Grateful that there was someone sitting in the passenger seat while the fear simmering inside him feasted on his sanity. A fear that had sat down at the table of his mind the minute he realized that Molly was in the hands of a murder.

"How much further?" he snapped, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as the car's whole back end lost contact with the road.

John braced himself against the seat as they came down with a thud, checking the chamber of his gun before glancing down at his mobile. The GPS pinged cheerfully. "3 minutes," he said as is started to rain.

It was not a gentle spring rain, but rather the kind of torrential downpour that was like being dropped in the middle of an angry hurricane in the barren desert of the white capped sea. The rain obscuring everything but the road just beyond the beam of their headlights.

Sherlock squinted past the rapid beat of the windshield wipers as lightening lit up the sky and cursed at the road. John lifted an eyebrow at the expletive but remained quiet.

 _Molly_.

He had put himself in more agonizing life threatening situations then any rational person could endure. Prided himself on the ice in his veins. Reveled in the cold calculated reasoning that kept him distant from painfully unnecessary emotions like the sheet of glass that kept his sister from the rest of the world.

But this— _THIS_.

This was something new and terrifying. He could barely see beyond this moment. Barely _think_.

And he wasn't sure why. Or wasn't willing to look at it directly. But the truth of it was there, lingering just on the edge of his mind.

"We'll get there," John said, his voice low and calm as if he had read the frantic pace of his friend's thoughts. Sherlock spared a glance at his friend, even though the car was plunging through the thundering rain at an alarming pace.

John smiled at him grimly. It was the sort of smile that was not a smile at all. The kind that only John Watson could muster. No mirth in it, but a harsh slash of barely contained rage. "We'll find her in time," he repeated through gritted teeth.

Sherlock nodded sharply. It helped. Somehow John's words helped slow the terror that had sunk it's vicious teeth deep into the marrow of his bones. But he pushed the gas pedal all the way down to the floor all the same.

The piece of crap police car caught air as they broke through the trees into a small clearing. His teeth vibrated when they slammed back into the ground, and he had just a fraction of a second to register the car parked directly in their path before stomping on the breaks. The tires screeched. They spun, swerving violently across the wet ground. The steering wheel ripped out of his grasp as they careened into the side of William's car with a bone crunching crash. Pain lanced up the side of his neck as they came to a sudden and violent halt. The engine ticked quietly just below the dull roar of rain.

"Shit," John breathed next to him.

Sherlock saw everything all at once through the murky windshield. Saw Molly first-impossibly small and crouched in the mud.

She was covered in blood, and she didn't look up. Not at the sound of the crash. Not when William ran, scampering into the trees under the harsh glare of the headlights like an injured creature of the night.

She didn't move, and Sherlock realized that he hadn't really known fear until that very moment.

He registered with blinding clarity that the terror he had felt before had just been a pale watery ghost of an emotion. A specter of the real thing. This new fear was laced with a bone deep regret that pinned him to his seat.

"John," he managed, his voice ragged and broken and completely foreign to his own ears.

And of course his friend heard him. Knew exactly what Sherlock needed because John had visited this terrible moment before. Had somehow endured this evicerating fear when he had held his own dying wife.

So John didn't answer, but just reached across Sherlock and pushed opened his door.

"Get out you stupid sod," John said, shoving him hard in the arm. Sherlock blinked. And moved.

He was out of the car, the freezing rain instantly plastering his hair against his forehead. And then John followed, barking instruction that Sherlock barely registered before disappearing into the dense trees after William.

Sherlock hesitated. Molly's hair hung around her like a dark curtain, hiding her face. She didn't look up as he approached. Every fiber of his mind screamed at him to follow John. His veins hummed with the sick violent need to find William and do the dark things that only he was willing to do. But for the first time, his place wasn't on the chase but here in this blood soaked puddle in an empty clearing in the middle of nowhere.

Because Molly had inexplicable become more important then the chase. More important then the _game_.

So instead of crashing through the underbrush after the murderer, Sherlock Holmes knelt down in front of Molly and reached out to push the damp hanks of her hair out of her eyes.

She flinched away from his hand. His heart contracted into a hard knot at that small frightened movement.

"Molly?" he asked softly. She lifted her head a fraction, but her gaze slide off his face as if she couldn't bare to look at him. His hands clenched into fists on his thighs.

His eyes scanned her body, assessing and analyzing each bruise and scrape. She had a deep gash on her left temple. Old-at least a couple hours. The blood matted against her hairline was dry. Nasty but superficial. Her pupils were wide and unresponsive in the slowly diminishing flashes of light. Concussion. His lips thinned.

She wasn't crying.

Rain ran in rivulets down her cheeks and off the bow of her bottom lip. But she wasn't crying. Instead, she was muttering softly to herself as she looked down at the blood on her hands, turning them within each other as if she had never seen them before.

"I think something's wrong with me," Molly whispered to her hands. He bent his head closer, barely catching the soft words as the wind tried to steal them. She shook her head. "I don't feel anything Sherlock. I..." she shook her head, her voice catching on the words, "I hurt him. Why don't I feel anything?"

She looked at him then and the desperate confusion in her warm brown eyes tore open the scar where his heart had been. "I'm a killer," she finished softly.

Sherlock thought of the cold calm that had swept through him before he shot Magnussen in the face. The certainty that all the other doors had closed around him, and the only other option left was a terrible one.

He knew she was asking for absolution. But it was something he couldn't give. He couldn't take away the horror and guilt that would visit her in the dead of night, driving her from twisted sweaty sheets to walk the hard floors until dawn.

So he gave her what he could. Gave her the closed doors. And hoped it would be enough.

Sherlock cleared his throat, straightening his spine. "A perfectly sound analysis of the situation, Dr. Hooper. But wrong." Molly's head jerked up and her eyes focused on him for the first time.

Good, he thought as he continued, "One out of four women are assaulted at some point in their lives. Out of those who have the misfortune of being kidnapped, 82% die in the first three hours. You were gone for approximately 2 hours and 27 minutes. If I understand William's psychosis correctly-and I am rarely wrong-then you had only a 14.7% chance of living until tomorrow. The balance of probability says that he was going to kill you. And soon."

Sherlock had to fight to keep his voice steady as he said those hateful words. Struggled to keep his face mild as he calculated her death. He swallowed the acid that rose in his throat.

Molly frowned at him. But she was listening.

He shook his head gently, "You survived. That is all." His hand hovered in the air between them. He leaned closer, wanting to tilt her chin, wanting to see the fire back in her eyes, wanting to taste her breath. " _That. is. all._ " he said fiercely.

For a long moment, she remained still. Raindrops clung to her eyelashes like unshed tears. He held his breath as he waited. Knowing the moment was critical. Knowing that if she took on the mantel of guilt it would be too heavy for her to bare.

Molly sighed and held out her hand. His heart lurched in relief.

A knife lay in the flat of her palm, just a small flash of silver half buried under dirt and blood. He reached for it and felt her hold her breath at his approach. With the tips of his fingers he plucked the blade from her hand, careful not to brush her skin. She took a small shuddering breath as the knife disappeared into his pocket.

He wanted to touch her, he realized with shock. Wanted to drag her against him and press his lips against her hair until the tension melted out of both of them. Wanted it more then he could remember ever wanting anything. His bones ached with it.

But she wasn't his.

So he didn't touch her.

Not when John returned from the dark underbrush empty handed and shaking his head. Not when the rain eased to a drizzle, and Erin arrived with her deputies and dogs to search the woods. Sherlock stood silently by her side when John draped a blanket over her shoulders and helped her to her feet. He listened to the tremor in her voice and the hollowness just beneath as she told her story to first one office and then another until he chased them away with a snarl.

Sherlock didn't touch her as they sat together in the shadows of the back seat, his fingers curled helplessly next to hers on the cracked leather. He listened to her breath as John drove them away from the crime scene. He watched as she leaned her forehead against the cold glass. He didn't touch her as the sunlight fought it's way through the clouds like salvation to play over the delicate features of her solemn profile.

And he didn't touch her. Because she wasn't his.

Not yet.

* * *

 **Just to be clear, Molly saved her own damn self. I'm tired of reading stories where the girl is saved by the dashing male hero. A woman can be her own savior, even if she is a quiet introvert who secretly likes to read fan fiction. I'm just sayin. ;)**


	8. Chapter 8

**Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate every single review, favorite, and follow.**

 **Story rating has changed to M. I'm sure you can guess why. If you can't guess then I'm not sure what the heck you've been up to on this site. ;)**

Chapter 8

The motel's water pressure was dreadful, but Molly stood under the sputtering shower until the tepid stream turned the same temperature as the icy shards shifting through her veins. The rusty knob squeaked as she turned off the shower, stepped gingerly out of the tub, and temporarily forgot what she needed to do next.

Water pattered down on the peeling linoleum and pooled around her bare feet while she considered the hazy outline of her naked body in the foggy mirror.

She wasn't sure she wanted to see herself more clearly. She was afraid she would see the shattered remains of her dignity in the reflection of her own familiar brown eyes. Afraid that William had taken something from her that could never be recovered.

She hugged her arms around her waist. The shadow of her reflection did the same. It looked small and vulnerable. Beaten and broken.

Molly leaned forward and swiped the steam off the mirror. The bruise on her temple stood out against her pale skin. She touched it gingerly, hissing at the pain.

 _Bastard_.

She thought of the way William's skin looked when it splayed open under her knife. It had been so different then cutting into a corpse-full of stark garish color. Her memory was saturated with the pale white marble of his wrist splitting open to reveal the glistening red meat underneath.

No. Molly lifted her chin to glare at her reflection. The eyes staring back at her glittered, but she refused to let the tears fall. She was not broken. She had survived.

She took a deep breath, realizing for the first time that she was still dripping wet, the growing puddle around her soaking into the dingy bathmat. She frowned at the threadbare towel hanging on the wall. It looked scratching and awful. Her day was clearly not going to get any better. She sighed and reached for it.

Her fingers froze midway.

There was a dressing gown folded neatly on the edge of the sink. It hadn't been there when she'd gotten in the shower. She ran her fingers over the supple fabric. It was a pale delicate pink and achingly soft. Molly glanced at the bathroom door. It was cracked open, the fresh air swirling patterns into the steam. Tentatively she sunk her hands into the thick terry robe and hugged the luxurious fabric to her chest. It felt like comfort—like lazy afternoon naps and steady London rain on the windows.

She slipped it on, not bothering to dry off any further, and let out a watery sigh. It was like being enveloped in a cloud. Her eyes pricked. She pulled it tight around her waist, smiling despite herself when the bottom of the gown brushed the floor. It was easily three sizes too big for her. She huffed out a little laugh, and shook her head. She had a suddenly clear image of Sherlock—stiff and formal in his mud covered suit—waiting amongst the lace and silk undergarments to buy her this extravagant scrap of comfort. It was a sweetness that her heart didn't know what to do with.

And yet it thawed some of the crushing weight that sat on her chest. Just enough that she found the strength to dry her hair. Just enough that she could smooth the tangles with her fingers. Just enough that she found the strength to turn away from her battered reflection before limping out of the bathroom.

Sherlock's back was to her. She could hear the urgency in his voice as he spoke quietly to John, his head bent to hold the mobile to his ear as he rolled up one sleeve with his free hand. She stopped in the center of the room at the sight of him. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest. He looked dark and untouchable and painfully male. Molly felt a flush crawl up her neck that had nothing to do with fear.

He was still wet. His charcoal gray shirt clung to the lean muscles of his back, accentuating the way his trousers hugged his slim hips. He was barefoot, his shoes kicked off in the corner of the room. Something about the gesture seemed strangely intimate.

The rain had pulled at his dark curls. She watched a drop trickle down the back of his neck and disappear under his collar. A shiver ran down her spine.

He finished his phone call and turned around. She stiffened, trying to prepare herself for the shape of his lips and the way the light caught and hung on the sharp angles of his face. Molly swallowed dryly as desire shifted and uncurled lazily in the pit of her stomach. His eyes were a silvery gray today, the color of dusk and dawn and whispered secrets.

Sherlock was right. Love made you weak. It must. Because this? The unexpected kindness of Sherlock Holmes standing in her worn out motel room instead of chasing down a killer? The kindness of that simple gesture threatened to unravel her.

She bit her lip. "Thank you for the dressing gown."

"You're welcome," he said mildly, as if she had not been locked in a trunk just hours before. As if she hadn't seen the panic in his eyes when he had knelt down with her in the driving rain.

His gaze raked over her body, calculating and analyzing, stripping her bare. She tried to hold steady, tried to hide the hot tears that burned under her eyelids. She lifted her chin and looked back.

His knees were stained with mud, and his curls an unruly riot around his head. There were faint bruises under his eyes. She wondered how long it had been since he truly slept. He must be as miserable and cold as she was.

"I'm fine, Sherlock. Really, I am," she managed, willing her voice to stay even. "You should go with John." She twisted her hands inside the wide sleeves of the robe as he continued to study her.

Somehow she was still freezing. She should have warmed up in the shower, but the cold seemed to be bleeding straight from her heart like ice.

There was a long moment of silence. He narrowed his eyes. She attempted a smile. It must not have been convincing because Sherlock set his mobile down on the side table with a deliberate click.

"You are not fine," he growled, advancing on her slowly. Alarmed, Molly shifted to the other side of the bed, hugging the thick dressing gown closer, like armor.

She couldn't bear his closeness. Couldn't be trusted to keep the truth of things distant and hidden from his brilliant searching mind. Not now.

Molly held out her hand to stop him. "Sherlock," she pleaded,panic bleeding into her voice.

He pause, arching one slim eyebrow at her. She shook her head at him. "You should go change. I just…I just need to rest is all. I'm fine…really I am," she stammered. But the false conviction in her voice was undermined when a wave of lightheadedness swept through her. She closed her eyes as the world swam and then steadied.

When she opened them again, Sherlock was watching her. She should have known better then try to deceive him. A muscle ticked in his jaw. He skirted the bed, and there was something in his face, something wild and dangerous that made her take another unsteady step back.

Her sprained ankle buckled under her at the sudden movement, and she yelped in pain. He was next to her in two long strides.

Sherlock caught her before she fell, sweeping an arm beneath her legs and gathering her against him in one of those painfully graceful movements that only Sherlock could pull off. The motion sent a bolt of lust sizzling down her abdomen. She protested weakly, but he shushed her.

And then, _god_ , he was everywhere. All around her. The smell of him. The pale skin against her own. The lean muscles of his arms flexed as he shifted her. It was as if her senses had spent a lifetime in the shadows, and she was finally standing in the sun. Molly pressed her thighs together desperately.

His breath feathered against her face as he lowered both of them into the nearby chair, still cradling her on his lap. He held her stiffly, tension radiating off him in waves, as if he didn't know what to do with her now that he had her in his arms. She tried to squirm away, but his fingers tightened around her firmly. "No."

She tried to look up at him, but he tucked her head under his chin, settling her closer against him. "Just…let me…" he cleared his throat. "Please," he finished simply.

She didn't have the strength to resist such a simple request.

So she let him. She sighed and settled closer, tucking her toes between the loose chair cushion.

For a moment they just breathed together. She listened to the steady thrum of his heart underneath her cheek until it matched her own. Across the room, his mobile vibrated and they listened to it ring until the sound fell away. She let her hand rest on his chest, her fingertips brushing the hollow of his throat.

His lips grazed her temple, just the barest of touches against the angry cut on her hairline. "He hurt you," Sherlock said, his voice frighteningly calm. "I will kill him for it."

Molly shivered. She did not doubt him. She loved this man who cradled her so carefully against his chest, but she knew that he was dangerous.

She sniffed, watching her fingertips trace the line of his collarbone. "I hurt him too, you know."

She felt Sherlock smile against her hair. He laughed, a low rumble that skittered across the tight skin of her lower belly. "Yes, you did. You saved yourself Molly Hooper."

She nodded, and the sob that had been hiding in the back of her throat tore free from it's mooring. Molly pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. He smoothed the damp hair off her face gently and kissed her forehead. "I was scared," she confessed raggedly.

She started to shake—giant seismic tremors that rocked her whole body. She was helpless to stop the silent tears from coursed down her face.

He made low soothing nonsense sounds as he wiped the wetness off her cheeks, but she was beyond comfort. Flashes of the nightmare seared through her; the dark trunk filled with the smell of wet carpet and the sharp tang of her own fear, the tip of the silver blade disappearing into marble white flesh, and the blood—rivers of blood.

Her vision narrowed. The oxygen in the room had thinned. She couldn't get enough air. A panic attack, the doctor in her mind diagnosed calmly. A completely normal response for a victim of a violent crime but her tears were hot and angry. She ground her teeth together, and listened to her heart raged in the confines of her ribcage, a quake that threatened to consume her.

Sherlock forced her face up to his. "Breath," he snapped, his fingers tightening painfully on her jaw. She took a shuddering breath, forcing air into the tight confines of her lungs. "Again," he demanded. She breathed. His thumb brushed her bottom lip. She felt herself flush, and suddenly the rush of her heart wasn't fear but its dark and dangerous cousin-desire.

He waited until her sobs turned to watery hiccups. His unfathomable gaze flickered over her face. "I am always scared," he confessed. Molly swallowed. It was not what she expected him to say. She was so close that she could see the icy blue hiding under the silver lake of his eyes, still and calm. Her heart slowed.

He swallowed, his brow furrowed as he looked down at her. "When I jumped off that roof. When Mary died. When I faced Moriarty and in a dozen other situations—I was scared every time."

He traced the line of her eyebrow with one fingertip. "Fear is wisdom in the face of danger. Being afraid does not mean you are not brave or strong or fierce." He shook his head. "In fact, it means quite the opposite."

Molly ducked her head. Sherlock Holmes, the man who thought human emotions were abhorrent. Who was incapable of love. Who called sentiment a defect.

She couldn't look at him while he comforted her. It felt too real. Too precious. Too _close_.

The hollow of her chest ached with it. Another tremor rocked her. She was flying apart, and even Sherlock's arms couldn't hold her together.

"What do you need?" he asked helplessly.

She could feel his heart, a steady beat through the damp fabric of his shirt. Out on the open walkway voices passed by, the jingle of keys, fading laughter. She raised her head, letting her breath brush against the pulse at the base of his throat. She did it as if her body had made a decision that the rest of her was hopeless not to follow. His heart stuttered underneath her lips.

"You," she whispered against his skin.

She felt him hold his breath. Felt the moment stretch out tender and fragile and sweet. She waited, listening as the echo of his name in her heart chase away the fear that still reverberated in her bones.

And then his fingers slipped inside her dressing gown.

She swallowed a gasp as his palm stretched across her rib cage, his thumb brushing against the underside of her breast. His hand was warm against her numb skin. The air thickened and suddenly she couldn't breathe for a completely different reason.

He hesitated. She could feel the battle raging inside him. Could feel the calculating detective trying to understand and analyze the heat that saturated the moment. Could feel him trying to file each bit of data into neat categories. Could feel him _choosing_.

She didn't give him time to decide.

Molly pressed her mouth to the curve of his shoulder and neck, letting her tongue brush against one of the freckles there. He stiffened in her arms. She shifted, and the movement forced his palm to slide over her the curve of her breast. She arched into it helplessly. He made a sound in the back of his throat. A low rumble that made liquid heat settle hot and heavy between her legs.

And then he was touching her as if something had broken inside of him.

The edges of the robe fell open around her. She tried to hold still as his hand roamed restlessly across her skin, afraid that any movement would make him pause. Would make him think.

But it was impossible not to react as his fingertips etched a line of flames over the curve of her hip, traced the small birthmark on the top of her thigh, and dipped into the sensitive skin under her knee. She couldn't help the whimper that escaped her when the calloused pad of one finger scraped against the freckle hidden on the inside of her thigh.

He paused at the sound, seeming to absorb it. Cataloging her reaction for further analyzation. He didn't look at her, his brow furrowed in concentration as he touched her. Molly almost laughed but then his musician's fingers trailed lightly over the damp hair at the apex of her thighs and _oh dear lord she was on fire_.

His curls brushing her cheek as his hands explored her. He was watching, she realized, those pale eyes following the movement of his own searching fingers as he dissected her with his touch. She had been under the seering heat of his deducing mind before. But never like this. Having the full focus of Sherlock Holmes was more then she had expected. More then she could stand. His gaze scorched her skin.

But she was helpless to move. So she watched too. Watched as those long clever fingers mapped out her body in an erotic dance that made the muscles in her abdomen clench with need.

He hesitated, and she must have said something. Must have let the plea slip from between her lips, because his palm cupping her breast, the callouses on his thumb rough against her nipple. She arched into it, helpless against the gasp that broke free. His name on her lips. Coldness was a distant memory. She was burning.

His eyes glittered as he tortured her, and there was color high on those beautiful cheekbones.

His fingers danced across the top of her thighs, brushing so close to where she was wet and throbbing that she growled with frustration. The sound made him pause again, and her lips found the sensitive spot beneath his jaw. She nipped and licked at it, savoring the salt of his skin.

"Molly," he said, his voice thick and dark with wanting. Something primal unfurl inside her. And she knew. Knew like every woman since the beginning of time, what he was asking. What he needed.

She sat up, letting the robe slip off her shoulders. She was gloriously naked, and he was fully clothed and for the moment she didn't care. Because here? In the dark corners of a bedroom, Molly Hooper was not shy. His fingers tightened on her bare hips as she straddled him. She saw the uncertainty flicker across his face. Saw the lust twisted together with a bewildered panic as she hovered over him.

She slipped her fingers into the damp hair at the nape of his neck and leaned forward, letting her breath skate across his lips. His eyes fluttered shut but he didn't close the distance between them. Molly paused, savoring the thick need that rolled off of him. His breath hitched, and he tilted his hip up helplessly. She smiled and settled against the hard length of him, only a whisper of fabric between them.

He made a strangled sound deep in his throat. She tangled her fingers into his soft curls as his lips traced a line of fire along her collar bone. His breath was ragged. She waited. Wanting to taste his lips but unwilling to take them.

She rocked her hips against him, feeling the heat building relentlessly inside her belly. His palm rested on the flat of her spine, holding her in place as she moved. She arched back and his mouth closed on her nipple, his tongue lapping hot and wet. She wondered if he had ever had a woman before and the sight of his dark head bent over her breast made her groan.

The sensation was overwhelming. So sharp and clear and real that she could barely stand it. Every time she rocked against him, sparks of barbed wire pleasure shot across her skin.

But it wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

"Sherlock," she gasped, her hand tightening against the back of his neck, his name a question.

His went still. His mouth rested on the swell of her breast, his breath hot against her skin. She waited, her lips in his hair, her heart pounding in her ears. _Oh god,_ _please say yes_ She dragged her mouth down the pale column of his neck, tasting him. Begging with her lips.

He nodded. Just the smallest jerk of his head as if the acceptance had been dragged out of the deepest part of him.

Molly knew she should stop.

Knew that she was destroying herself even as she shifted up on her knees. Knew that he would run afterwards as he lifted his hips so she could drag down his trousers, his erection straining against his pants.

She looked up at him. Looked up to see his eyes darken like tempered steel as she ran her finger down the hard ridge of him. She let her tongue dart out to wet her bottom lip, knowing exactly how she looked. Half wild and naked in his lap. He closed his eyes, and she pulled him free. He made an incoherent choking sound that went straight to her wet throbbing center.

Molly smiled. All those times that she had heard women talk about Sherlock. All those whispers and appreciative looks. And he was hers. Hot and heavy in her hand. A wave of something dark and powerful hit her. This strong brilliant amazing man was falling apart underneath her, and Molly felt strength bleed back into her veins, chasing away the fear that had locked its jaws around her heart.

She realized with sharp agonizing clarity, what Sherlock had intended when he pulled her into his lap.

He was giving her this moment so she could heal. Sacrificing a part of himself to chase away her demons. To hold back the darkness.

And Molly knew that she was right and truly lost. She would never love anyone with the ferocity with which she loved this man. And she also knew, that this might be all he could give her. And somehow it would have to be enough.

His forehead rested on her shoulder, his soft curls brushing her cheek as they both watched her small hand stroke the hard length of him. Molly kissed his temple and let her thumb brush the wetness that had gathered at the tip. It was his turn to shake.

She shifted, bringing her hips closer, letting his erection slide along the heat between her legs. Letting him feel how wet he made her. He cried out against the curve of her neck, the low tremor of his voice like black satin slipping across her skin. His whole body was painfully tense, like a bow drawn too tight.

She couldn't wait any longer. Couldn't draw out the pleasure for fear that they would both disintegrate. Because suddenly, she wasn't sure who was holding and who was falling apart.

She positioned herself over him and stopped, wanting him to feel it. Wanting him to pay attention. He cursed, the tendons in his neck standing out as he rested his head on her shoulder. She sank down onto him in one long slow slide. _Oh, god yes._ The friction and heat was so intense that she had to stop again, panting as she trembled on the brink.

His hands clenched into the small of her back, his fingernails digging into her skin. The small pain chased away the overwhelming wave of desire that threatened to drag her under. Her vision sharpened.

He tilted his hips, adjusting himself so that she sank deeper, taking him fully. She curled her body against him and listened to the ragged edge of their breath. For a long moment they paused there. Molly couldn't think, every molecule of her focus of the cascading pleasure that threatened to swallow her. She buried her nose in the hair at the nape of his neck. He smelled like rain and pavement. He vibrated with tension against her.

She shifted and his fingers were like iron on her waist. "Move," he said, his voice so low and ragged that she almost lost control of the slick reins of her desire.

She moved. His strong hands keeping her steady as she rocked against him. The heat inside her tightened as she drove herself down on him. She trembled and moved. His teeth scraped her shoulder.

"Now," he said. His voice was rough, but it was a command all the same.

He touched her. Reached between them with one long finger and touched her where their bodies met.

She came, hard and violent and bittersweet.

Sherlock cursed against her skin, a stream of dark lost words that skirted the sharp painful edge of her pleasure. He surged up into her, and then he was shaking and pulsing inside of her, his fingers tangled in her hair.

She was drowning and coming to life all at the same time. There was nothing but this small, quiet, life shattering moment, and the man falling apart in her arms.

Molly kept her eyes closed as long as possible, listening to the frantic rhythm of his heart that matched her own, unwilling to face what she knew with absolutely certainty was coming next. She brushed her lips softly against the sensitive skin under his ear and tried not to love him.

He let go, his hands falling on the arms of the chair. She bent her head into his dark curls and let her senses fill with the smell of him. His breath steadied. She pressed her palms against the wings of his shoulder blades. His heart slowed, and she felt him disappear inside his mind palace, even though their bodies were still molded together in the most intimate way.

He thought she didn't know. But she could feel him go every time.

She kissed the edge of his jaw, the scruff of his beard like sandpaper against her lips. She tried to memorize everything-clarify it in her mind so that she could take it out later. and visit the sweetness of it when she was back in her empty bedroom. After he had dismissed the truth of this moment, and she was alone once again.

She breathed against his neck, her lips soft against the smattering of freckles against his pale skin. He stiffened, coming back to her from wherever he went in his own mind.

Her heart sank when he lifted her off his lap silently.

Molly swayed on her bare feet, but he made no move to help her this time. She steadied herself with the back of her knees against the bed, bending down to pick up the crumpled dressing gown from the floor, needing its soft protection for what was about to happen.

By the time she looked up, Sherlock had somehow pulled himself back together. He didn't look at her as he buttoned his trousers and slipped his coat on. He flicked his collar up and buried his hands in his pockets. Molly felt dread, slick and oily, fill her stomach as the man who had just broken apart in her arms turned back into Sherlock Holmes.

She pulled the thick robe tighter around her middle, painfully aware of the wetness on the inside of her thighs and the empty throb between her legs. "Sherlock-," she started.

He looked at her, his face so hard and distant that any words she was about to say turned to ash in her mouth.

She was not surprised, but it hurt all the same. Hurt almost as much as the pleasure had mere moments before. The back of her throat burned.

Sherlock swiped his mobile off the side table, glancing at it casually as he talked at her. "I called Lestrade. He's sending a car." He paused, frowning at a text. His fingers tapping out something on his screen. "I think it would be best if you stayed at Baker Street until John and I can get this all sorted. Mrs. Hudson can look after you."

He slipped his phone into his pocket and wrapped his scarf around his neck. She watched the constellation of freckles that she had just traced with her tongue disappear under the silk. She nodded at him even though he still wasn't looking at her.

He turned to go. Molly shivered.

He paused with his hand on the doorknob. She traced the line of his shoulders with her eyes. She felt raw and exposed, laid bare like a corpse on her table. She didn't try to hold back the tears that gathered and fell. He wouldn't bother to look back anyway.

Sherlock opened the door, pausing to stare out at the dark parking lot. "Molly..." He cleared his throat. "I can't be the man you need me to be."

Molly pressed a hand against her stomach, wondering why this moment hurt so much more then all the things she had endured. Sherlock paused. She could see the night sky beyond his head. It was brilliant with stars. She waited for the death blow.

"This won't happen again."

The cool breeze swirled the tails of his coat around his legs. Molly felt the path of her life lock around her feet.

"I know," she told his silently retreating back.

* * *

Sherlock got as far as John's door before his knees turned to water. He caught himself on the door jam, and leaned his forehead against the cracked paint. His body vibrated like a taut violin string, every nerve screaming. He couldn't seem to make his lungs work, every breath tortured.

He closed his eyes and saw Molly, stretched out warm and naked in his lap, every inch of her his for the taking. His traitorous mind had catalogued the exact shade of the glow of her skin and the temperature of her slick wet heat closing around him.

He tried to delete it from his memory. Tried to erase the sweet smell of her hair and the soft sounds she had made when he touched her. He might as well have tried to erase the rush of cocaine.

He hadn't been prepared for the power of the emotions that had gripped him when he had finally let himself touch her. In the past, sentiment had been just a dim specter against the bright rush of an unsolved mystery; love just a pale ghost compared to the hot pump of adrenaline and the intricate puzzle of his own mind.

But this? Sherlock's hands shook as he dragged them through his tangled hair. This was far from dull.

He stared at the wall, trying to unravel the tangle of his wretched emotions. He was surprised to find that it wasn't the intimacy that alarmed him. Not the gut wrenching pleasure pain of tasting her. Of _having_ her. It wasn't that his weak vulnerable body was spent and sore from release.

No, what was even more terrifying, what made his heart clench like a fist in his chest, was that _it hadn't been enough._ He ground his teeth together. _God_ , _not nearly enough_.

Even with her smell still clinging to every inch of him, he wanted MORE. Wanted her helpless and begging under him. Wanted to slide between her legs where he belonged until they were both slick with sweat and gasping for breath.

Sherlock sank to the ground, his back sliding down the wall. He gripped the sides of his head. He was shaking and half hard again just thinking about it.

He could go back. Could open her door and step back into her arms. Into her bed.

But she loved him and the knowledge kept him pinned to the cold concrete floor.

Because he couldn't give her what she wanted. What a woman like her deserved. He was a train wreck. A sociopath with a death wish. A drug addict with enemies. He was broken. Damaged.

Eurus had seen to that a long time ago.

He leaned his head back and stared up at the night sky. Emotion wasn't the weakness he had once believed. His sister's horrible game had shown him that. She had evicerated him with emotion, yes, but it had been that same sentiment that had given him the edge to solve Eurus's puzzle in the end. Emotions were a tool he could use, a sharp instrument that had been missing from his carefully crafted arsenal of weapons.

But love? That was not for him.

Having friends was bad enough. John had been right, all those years ago. Alone was no protection. Friends were a weakness, yes. A physical part of his heart stretched out into the world-exposed and vulnerable. But somehow, his friends had become his strength too. And he could not bear to lose a single one of them.

Sherlock steepled his fingers under his chin, trying to ignore the trembling in his hands, trying to _think._

No matter what his body wanted, what his heart wanted. He couldn't love Molly Hooper.

Sherlock groaned and opened his eyes again. He had more important things to worry about right now. He hadn't missed the dark bruises around Molly's ankle or the deep cut at her temple. He welcomed the way the fading thrum of desire twisted into something dark and dangerous.

Molly might not be his, might never be his, but he'd be damned if anyone would hurt her again. He would die first

He struggled to his feet, sliding his phone from his pocket. There were seven text messages from John. Sherlock took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and stepped into his mind palace.

It took much longer then usual to slip into the cool detachment that normally protected him. His hands shook as he pulled on the heavy weight of indifference, struggling to erase the aching sadness and acceptance in her warm eyes as he walked away.

It had to be this way, he reasoned. It would get easier with time.

It was lie, but it soothed the panic that tore at his heart.

When he opened his eyes again, he was steady. Sherlock thought of the finger shaped bruises on Molly's arm and rage sank like ice into his veins. He welcomed the numbness that stole over his skin, filling everything but the hollow ache in the center of his chest. Ignoring it, he punched in John's number and strode toward the stairs, forcing himself not to look at Molly's silent closed door. He had a man to kill.


	9. Chapter 9

**Much continued thanks to everyone for the reviews and follows! Had a little trouble with FF when I posted chapter 8 so make sure you didn't miss it!**

 **Sherlock misbehaves-it's how he makes his way in the world. Don't expect him to start singing love songs. He's unsurprisingly temperamental about being wrestled into romantic entanglements. ;)**

Chapter 9

"Are you sure you don't want me to take her, dear?" Mrs. Hudson asked as she puttered around the kitchen, easily dodging the beaker filled with mysterious smoking liquid as she put the kettle on.

Molly smiled down at Rosie's blond head. "I'd like to see you try."

Rosie touched her cheek with sticky fingers. Molly laughed and squeezed her sturdy little body tighter, ignoring her squirm of protest. The baby felt warm and solid in her arms—something real she could cling to while the rest of the world shifted and crumbled around her.

Molly tucked her feet underneath her, flinching a little at the twinge in her sprained ankle, and settled deeper into Sherlock's chair.

It smelled like him. Like violin rosin and the expensive cologne that lingered in the damp curls at the nape of his neck. Molly tried not to breath too deeply as she watched Mrs. Hudson pour her tea.

It had been almost 36 hours since Sherlock had left her standing in an empty motel room with the taste of his skin still lingering on her lips. 36 hours since an unmarked police car with a friendly stranger had whisked her back to London.

He hadn't called.

Molly had insisted on sleeping on the couch, fending off Mrs. Hudson's confused protests with unconvincing excuses. The slow trip up the first flight of stairs had been too tricky to consider taking John's old room upstairs, and she could not bear to sleep in Sherlock's bed.

Exhaustion was a heavy weight in the lining of her skin, but the peace of oblivion still eluded her—dark shapeless dreams dragging her roughly out of sleep. She awoke over and over again, tangled in the sweaty blanket and choking on her own screams.

Eventually she had given up and spent the long empty hours of the night curled in John's chair next to the crackling fire. Somehow she had found the skull in her hands, the cool smooth surface against her palm holding back the darkness as she desperately tried not to feel at home in the chaotic flat with its haphazard stacks of papers and wall filled with grainy photographs of dead bodies.

Tried not to imaging Sherlock reading quietly in his chair across from her, the firelight dancing across the sharp planes of his face, his hand resting idly on her bare foot as he turned the pages.

"Lemon?"

She glanced up at Mrs Hudson, who was watching her from the kitchen. Molly managed a weak smile, "Ta."

Mrs. Hudson plucked a warm baby bottle out of the pan on the stove and carried the tea tray into the sitting room. Molly bounced the now fussing Rosie on her knee and reached for the bottle.

Mrs. Hudson waved her away. "Oh no, let me. Really dear, you need to rest. I doubt the boys sent you here to babysit."

Molly opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again when the Mrs. Hudson pointed at her. "Now don't you argue with me, Molly Hooper. I heard you wandering around up here in the middle of the night." She put a hand to her mouth, her eyes suddenly welling up with unshed tears. "No wonder you can't sleep, you poor thing. Kidnapping! Dreadful business…dreadful!"

Molly attempted a more convincing smile, "I'm really okay," she lied brightly.

She knew there was no point in arguing when Mrs. Hudson frowned at her, so she just untangled the baby's fingers from her hair before passing her over.

By the time Mrs. Hudson had settled into John's chair, Rosie's fussing had turned to outright wails. Molly winced, the sound rattling around inside her skull, beating against the headache that still haunted her. Rosie's cry cut off abruptly once she got the bottle in her mouth, her fingers curling around Mrs. Hudson's thumb as she drank. The baby's eyes fluttered shut.

Molly leaned back as a comfortable silence filled the flat, the only sound the baby's soft coos of contentment. The morning sunlight filtered through the flat, the curtains billowing in the warm spring breeze. Mrs Hudson kissed Rosie's head, smoothing damp golden curls away from her face. Molly's gut clenched at the peaceful scene.

She never wanted to leave.

It was the truth she was afraid to say out loud.

It wasn't just about Sherlock, although she wasn't sure how she was going to live through seeing him again. Wasn't sure how the dying parts of her heart could stand the sight of those cool silver eyes dismissing her.

But still.

It wasn't just him. There was something about this flat—about the people here. It was volatile and dangerous—but it was also _alive,_ as if there was more oxygen here in 221B Baker Street then anywhere else in London.

She wanted to be a part of it all. Wanted the piercing venom of Sherlock's deductions and the thunderous silence that followed. Wanted the adventure and danger. The chaos and the quiet.

Her fingers tightened around the delicate cup in her hands. Somewhere along the way, this odd assortment of lost and broken people had become her family. She took a sip of tea, wincing as it burned against the sorrow that clawed at the back of her throat.

"Are you ready to tell me what's really going on?" Mrs Hudson asked without looking up.

Molly bit her lip at the question. She knew how she _should_ feel. She had been kidnapped, beaten, and nearly killed by a murderer. She was a victim of violence. It had been traumatic—life altering. And yet…

And yet somehow, in that dark motel room, the fear and hopelessness had disappear like gray mist under Sherlock's touch. Somehow, he had given her back to herself-healed her.

And fractured her into a thousand broken shards in the process.

Her hand wobbled, the hot tea splashing out on her skin. She hissed and put her cup back into her saucer with a sharp click. Mrs. Hudson still didn't look up.

Molly's breath hitched. She leaned her head back against the soft leather, and let the hot tears slide silently down her cheeks. She cried until her bones ached, counting the bullet holes in the ceiling through blurry eyes until the suffocating shadows around her heart lifted just enough for her to look up again.

Mrs Hudson nodded to the box of tissues at her elbow. Molly blew her nose, her eyes still gritty but the crushing weight on her chest a fraction lighter.

"Oh sweetie, I am so sorry. You must have been terrified." Mrs Hudson said as she gently adjusted a now sleeping Rosie.

Molly nodded, taking another sip of tea. "Do you think…" she paused, the question that was haunting her caught like a barb in her throat.

Mrs. Hudson waited, humming softly to the baby. Molly swallowed. "Do you think he's capable of love?"

Mrs. Hudson's hand stilled on the baby's back. Molly balled the tissue up in her hands, afraid to look up. She could feel Mrs. Hudson studying her. She tried not to hold her breath.

After an endlessly long moment, Mrs. Hudson huffed out a laugh and tutted at her. "Oh goodness gracious Molly, I though you knew our Sherlock better then that!"

Molly thought she wasn't capable of hurting more, but the frank words sliced into her heart like a razor. She sniffed.

Mrs. Hudson was right. She knew it was beyond stupid to fall in love with him. Even after what had happened between them, he didn't want her. She had known it when he had pulled her onto his lap, known it as his fingertips scorched across her skin. Known it even as she held him inside her, listening to the anguished sound of her name on his lips.

She should have moved on years ago. Had tried dozens of times. But every other man seemed just a pale imposter for the what she really wanted. Molly shook her head, laughing bitterly, "I know its stupid…I just thought… maybe he might…I mean, if we…if I—"

"I've never know anyone who loves more fiercely than Sherlock," Mrs Hudson interrupted softly.

Molly's heart stuttered in her chest. She looked up. Outside, a car door slammed.

Mrs. Hudson smiled at her gently. "I know what people think." Mrs. Hudson leaned her cheek against Rosie's and shook her head, sighing to herself. "I know what he tells people. Sociopath and all that rubbish. But it's a lie dear. I thought you knew."

Molly stared at her, the colors of the flat brighter then they had been just moments before. "I don't…" Her voice wavered, she looked away at the sound of the front door closing below them. "You think…" Hope bloomed inside of her, soft and deadly.

"He can't say it." Mrs. Hudson responded. "Might never say it really. But oh goodness dear, he _loves_. What other reason could he possibly have for the risks he takes? The sacrifices he has made?"

John and Sherlock's voices drifted up the stairwell. Molly shoved the tissue in her pocket and sat up, blinking away tears. A sharp flash of terror cut through the raw ache in her chest at the sound of his voice. She was about to see him again.

"The real problem is that you're asking the wrong question," Mrs. Hudson said softly, tucking Rosie under her chin.

Molly glanced toward the door as their footsteps approached. Her fingers curled on the arms of the chair, and she fought the flush that threatened to burn across her cheeks.

She looked back at Mrs Hudson, who was watching her carefully. She needed to know. "What's the right question?" she whispered.

"The question," Mrs. Hudson said slowly, "is not whether he loves you. It's whether you can love _him_." Mrs Hudson gestured around the flat. "Because you won't change him—not Sherlock. Only the strongest woman could love a man without expecting anything in return."

Mrs Hudson tilted her head. "Is that you dear? Are you the one who can save him from himself?"

Molly shook her head. "He doesn't—"

The door crashed open, bouncing back on its hinges as Sherlock stormed into the flat. The baby woke with a startled cry.

"You lied, John," Sherlock snapped over his shoulder, ignoring Molly and the now wailing baby in Mrs Hudson's arms. He strode across the room, whipped off his coat, and threw it across the desk. He spun on his heel to glare at John, who appeared in the doorway behind him looking exhausted and annoyed.

John ignored the seething detective and crossed the room to retrieve Rosie. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of John trying to sooth the sobbing baby.

Mrs. Hudson glared at Sherlock and crossed her arms, "Really dear, there's more then just the neighbors to worry about!"

Sherlock ripped off his scarf, his murderous gaze never leaving John as he waved a hand in her direction. "Oh do shut up Mrs. Hudson. This is a place of business—not a bloody nursery." Mrs. Hudson started to respond, but John lifted an eyebrow at her and she settled back into the chair with a huff.

Sherlock muttered angrily as he paced the floor, his curls standing up dramatically as he ran his hands through it. Molly waited for him to look at her.

He didn't.

He'd changed his clothes finally, but she could see the fine spray of blood marring the crisp white of his shirt. The pocket of his suit jacket was ripped at the seam as if someone had tried to wrestle him to the ground with it. The knuckles of his right hand were raw and bruised. He spun on his heel again, practically vibrating with the need to confront John, but unwilling to involve Rosie.

She might as well have been invisible. Molly closed her eyes briefly. He was going to pretend it never happened. Dread, slick and ugly, seeped into the corners of her stomach.

She couldn't.

Couldn't go back to pretending to just be his friend—his pathologist. Couldn't stand next to him quietly while he peered into a microscope and pretended that he hadn't pushed inside her and shattered. She took a shuddering breath, bracing her hand on the arm of the chair.

"Are you okay Molly?" John asked, interrupting her spiraling thoughts as the baby finally quieted in his arms.

She felt Sherlock go still, as if he needed to hear her answer with his whole body. She glanced over at him, but his gaze slid off her face like oil on water.

She swallowed. "Not really—no," she responded, twisting her fingers together. John frowned.

"But I will be," she said as she got to her feet unsteadily.

Sherlock shifted, but stayed where he was, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as he stared down at the rug. "I just need a good night sleep is all," she finished lamely. John nodded, but Molly was fairly certain he didn't believe her.

John cleared his throat, shifting Rosie in his arms. "We caught him. If it helps with the sleeping. He's not a danger to you or anyone anymore."

Molly felt relief eddy through her, washing away the tightness that weighed down her lungs. She took a deep breath. It shouldn't matter. But it did.

She turned to Sherlock to thank him, but when she saw his thunderous expression her words dried up in her mouth.

Something was very wrong. She glanced at John who's mouth had flattened into a thin line. It was clear he was aware of Sherlock's barely controlled rage. Molly shifted on her feet. She had rarely seen the detective so unhinged.

John didn't look at his friend as he calmly handed Rosie back to Mrs Hudson, who fled down the stairs muttering to herself and shaking her head.

It seemed like a wise decision, but something kept Molly rooted to the spot. This was a side of Sherlock that she rarely saw. The raw man underneath the mantle of indifference that he usually wrapped around himself. And she wanted to see it. All of him.

So she stayed, feeling herself shrink back as John crossed his arms and said quietly, "Is there something you need to say to me mate?"

Sherlock seethed in John's direction, throwing his hands up as he stalked closer to his friend. John held his ground, tilting his head back as Sherlock hissed in his face, "We caught him, _mate—_ no thanks to you."

John squared his shoulders. "What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

Sherlock barked out a laugh, the sound bitter and sharp. "Did you think I wouldn't _see_? After all this time could you still be so dim?" John's hands curled into fists at his sides but he stayed silent, letting Sherlock's simmering anger wash over him. Sherlock leaned closer. "If you hadn't been flirting with the pretty police chief we would have gotten to him sooner. _I_ would have gotten him sooner. You were a distraction. Really John, you should get ahold of yourself. Mary is barely cold in her grave, and you are already on the hunt."

John paled.

Sherlock seemed oblivious to the cold fury that rolled off his friend in waves. He pulled up to his full height, sneering down at John with all arrogance in his arsenal, "What is it like in your simple minds? Always distracted with the base needs of the body. It must be so tiresome."

Silence fell like a heavy stone in the room. Molly stiffened, feeling helpless as the two friends faced off.

John's eyes narrowed, his fists twitching as he glared up at Sherlock. "For the sake of our friendship, I am going to pretend I didn't hear you say that."

The detective scoffed, crossing his arms, the picture of self-righteous indignation. He opened his mouth, but John held up a hand. "Shut UP, you insufferable ASS."

Sherlock lifted his chin, but shut up. John poked his finger hard into Sherlock's chest. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that because even you…" he stopped, his chest heaving, "even you wouldn't dare disgrace Mary's memory by insinuating…"

Sherlock shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but John interrupted again, his voice low and dangerously calm. "Be very careful what comes out of your damn mouth next, Sherlock. Because some things are unforgivable. Do you hear me you bloody git? _Unforgivable_."

John shoved him hard in the chest, and Sherlock staggered back a step. The detective had the decency to look shocked, as if he had just found the edges of John's loyalty and it was much closer than he had expected. His shoulder's sagged a fraction.

John shook his head, "God knows, I've heard you say worse things. But not to me. Do you understand me, Sherlock? Not. To. Me."

He took a deep breath and stepped away, leaving Sherlock suddenly pale and swaying slightly on his feet in the center of the room.

He had lost weight. The shadows digging deeply into the hollows of his cheeks. His skin seemed faded and thin, like parchment paper. Molly buried her hands in the pocket of her dress. Sherlock's face was blank, but she could see the dark edge of anguish in his pale eyes.

"He's mad at me because I didn't let him kill O'Hara."

Molly looked past Sherlock's still figure, realizing that John was talking to her.

"Oh?" she managed, biting her lip as she thought of Willy. Of the ugly ambition on his young face and the trail of family members he had left in his bloody wake. He would have killed her. Would have sliced her throat and left her in a shallow grave in the woods without blinking.

But his death would have been on her hands. And Sherlock's.

John was watching her from his place by the door. A question in his steady gaze. Molly knew what he was asking her to do. She nodded slightly back at him, just the barest fraction of her head.

Sherlock was still staring at the floor, his mouth tight. She took a deep breath, gathering what was left of the discarded bits of her own courage, and crossed the room to him. He remained still, but she could feel him move away from her all the same.

She reached down and touched his hand.

He flinched. Not enough that John would have seen, but enough that the tiny movement vibrated through the shattered remains of her heart.

She lifted his hand in hers, brushing her thumb gently over the mottled bruises that ran across his knuckles. He stopped breathing. She heard it over the silence of her own absent breath.

Molly looked up. His eyes sliced away. She wondered if he would ever look at her again. Wondered if this was the end of their friendship as well. The thought of it turned her stomach.

Up close she could see that there were fine flecks of blood spattered across his face, tangled in his long lashes. A faint purple bruise warred with the shadow of stubble along his jaw.

She sighed, squeezing his hand gently. "I think we've had enough killing for a lifetime, don't you?"

He looked at her, the beauty of his pale gaze so painful that she had to swallow the sound of distress that fought against the back of her lips. His face was stone, but she could sense the sharp fringe of darkness underneath. His hand trembled in her own.

"Enough," she repeated softly.

His gaze burned across her face, his lips so close that she could smell the sweetness of coffee on his breath.

His eyes were blue today, the color of the deep endless ocean. She wanted to drown in them. To sink into his fathomless eyes until there was no way to distinguish between the salt water and her own tears.

Something flared in the depth of those oceanic eyes as they stared at one another. He shook his head. A denial of what, she was afraid to ask. Her lips tingled.

She shook her head back, knowing it was impossible.

The silence stretched into something that tasted like goodbye.

Before she could brace herself, before she could memorize the rainbow of colors buried in his iris's or the soft line of his bottom lip, Sherlock jerked his hand away and swept out of the flat, brushing past John without a backwards glance. Molly watched him go, listening to the lonely thrum of her heart under the sound of his fading footsteps.

She turned to John, suddenly too tired and raw to hide the devastation on her face. John didn't move as the front door slammed under their feet.

They were silent for a long moment, her hands loose and empty at her sides. John just watched her with that infuriatingly calm gaze, as if he were seeing her for the first time.


	10. Chapter 10

**The end draws near. Thank you for reading and reviewing! xoxo**

Chapter 10

It wasn't dark yet. Sherlock leaned his head against the brick wall and stared up at the narrow slash of blue sky visible above the alleyway.

The hot reek of the nearby skip was not enough to repel him from his hiding place behind a stack of rotting wooden pallets. The constant murmur of tourist and commuters on the bustling street nearby barely penetrating the dim oasis of the alley. Sherlock's hands rested loosely on his knees as he watched the thin needle spin slowly between his fingers.

He wasn't angry at John for disposing of the small stash of drugs he had hidden in the front pocket of his suitcase. Wasn't surprised either. It was a game they played. A game John had unwittingly acquired from Mycroft, the poor sod.

His mobile buzzed angrily in his front pocket for the third time in less then ten minutes. Ignoring it, Sherlock lolled his head to the side and scanned the narrow alley. Ten feet away, the red eye of a security camera blinked slowly at him above a rusty door. He lifted his middle finger in a silent salute before silencing his phone and turning away.

Even the British Government couldn't beat the slide of a needle.

He didn't normally make a habit of shooting up in the daylight. It had always seemed like the actions of a desperate junkie. He preferred the soothing balm of night to dull the sharp edge of reason and morality. Sherlock watched the sunlight glint off the glass of the needle as it danced between his fingers.

A 7% solution. The chemist who mixed his drugs was a bloody genius, and Sherlock paid her handsomely for both her silence and the quality of her product. This particular concoction was the perfect drug for a superior mind—an elegant tool rather then a blunt weapon. With it, he could slip unnoticed through the narrow space between life and death, a ghost among the living.

Sherlock looked down. He had rolled his sleeve up ages ago, the fine lines of his veins blue against his pale skin. His thumb brushed the plunger.

The mottled bruise across his knuckles pulled when he moved his hand. Sherlock hung his head between his shoulders and thought of the bright burst of pleasure that had flashed through him when his fist collided with William's face. The bastard's grunt of surprise. Even the sharp pain when the man had rammed his head into Sherlock's jaw had been deliriously wonderful. The copper burst of blood in his mouth welcomed.

But it was a different sort of pleasure that haunted him.

A pleasure that smelled like vanilla and tasted like strawberries.

He wondered what the rest of her tasted like.

Sherlock cursed, opening his eyes. Good god, what was wrong with him? The cold of the brick wall seeped into his spine, a distinct contrast to the heat that stirred in the pit of his gut. He flexed his hand, watching the veins pop in his arm.

His mobile vibrated again.

He didn't glance at the screen as he hurled it at the opposite wall. It shattered into pieces and fell silent.

Sherlock took an unsteady breath, not bothering to look up at the watching red eye as he brought the sharp tip of the syringe to the thick blue vein on the inside of his arm. His hand shook. The needle slipped in his slick fingers.

"It won't help," John said as he stepped out of the shadows at the end of the alley.

He froze. He could feel the prick of the needle against his skin, relief and oblivion just one finger stroke away.

Sherlock ground his teeth together. He was in no mood for John Watson right now. But he could still taste the bitterness of his own black words lingering on his tongue. Could still see the flash of rage across John's face, and the hurt buried underneath. Guilt made Sherlock pause.

His head thumped the bricks as he watched John approach. "How long have you been following me?"

John shrugged off his jumper, wrinkling his nose as he passed the piles of trash to lean against the wall across from him. "Since whatever happened in that motel room."

Sherlock tensed, images of skin and heat skittering across his vision. "Nothing happened," he bit out.

John crossed his arms. "Clearly."

Sherlock thumbed the plunger, watching the drop of poison quiver on the tip of the needle. He licked his dry lips. John didn't move, just watched with those infuriatingly calm eyes as if Sherlock's life wasn't dangling from his own fingertips.

"Is it really so bad?" John asked quietly. "To love someone?"

The question squeezed the air out of his lungs. Sherlock glowered at his blogger. "As I've said a thousand times, I am uninterested in the distraction of romantic entanglements- nothing has changed."

John raised his eyebrows. "Nothing?"

The hitch of Molly's breath when she had settled down on him. Her fingers in his hair. The unbelievable slick heat.

Sherlock sneered. "Nothing that mattered."

John pushed off the wall. His movements casual, his hands loose at his sides. Sherlock was not fooled. He could read the resolve in the straightness of John's spine and the tightness of his mouth.

Against a normal civilian John was a force to reckoned with—a soldier still after all these years. Sherlock had been the unfortunate recipient of John's fist enough times to know.

But if it came to that—if John crossed the alley and tried to pry the relief out of his fingers, Sherlock would win. Desperation would give him the upper hand. And he was certain John knew it.

His stomach muscles clenched at the thought of fighting John, but he kept his wrists loose, his breathing easy. He would do what what was necessary.

John's shadow fell over him. Sherlock tensed, feeling the unspoken conversation rage between them. After a long moment, John sunk down next to him, his movements slow and careful as if Sherlock were a rabid animal who might spook and bolt. He sighed, pressing the pad of his thumb against the tip of the needle. Maybe he was.

John stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles. They were silent for a moment. Sherlock could practically hear the lumber of John's thoughts. It made his skin itch.

Before he could speak, John's mobile rang. John glanced at it, scowling. "Your damn brother is calling _me_ now. I tried changing my number but..." He trailed off, muttering to himself as he glanced at the sky. "If he really needed something I'm sure he would send a helicopter. Or the Queen."

Sherlock snorted. "He worries," he mumbled, rubbing his temple and contemplating how much simpler his life would have been if he had just let Mycroft buy Baker Street out from under Mrs. Hudson all those years ago and forgone a flat mate.

John was looking at him. Sherlock didn't turn his head.

"She could have died," John said mildly.

Sherlock's hand curled into a fist, the delicate needle straining between his fingers. The simple truth of John's words drove under his rib cage, slicing through his indifference. If something had happened to her...he took a decidedly unsteady breath, struggling to clamp down on his irrational emotions. After a long moment, he cleared his throat. "That would have been unfortunate indeed."

John shook his head. "Jesus, Sherlock. You've never been a coward before. Why start with this? Why start with her?"

Sherlock looked away, the black hole inside his chest stretching and expanding. He put the needle down next to him on the pavement, one index finger still resting on the cool glass.

It was a fair question.

"I know how she thinks she feels about me," he replied dully. He dragged his hand through the tangles of his hair, "Look at me, John. I'm not—" He broke of bitterly, waving his hand around the dirty alley. "She should choose someone else."

Sherlock stared blindly down at the cracks in the concrete and tried very hard not to think about someone else fingers on the inside of her thighs.

"I just don't know how to let it go. Now that I've…we've…." John looked at him sharply. Sherlock kept the color off his face through sheer stubbornness. "It's like cocaine…I can't seem to shake it," he finished miserably.

John was silent, his fingers tapping out a nervous rhythm on his knee. "Jesus Sherlock, I don't….this isn't…" He stopped and ran a hand through his hair. He let out a low laugh, shaking his head. "I married an assassin—I'm not exactly the poster child for healthy relationships."

Sherlock rolled the needle across the pavement with his finger. John's phone buzzed again, the only sound in the alley. They both ignored it.

John cleared his throat. "Before I met you, I was…lost."

Sherlock looked up, but John was staring across the alley, his eyes unfocused as he remembered. "I couldn't sleep. Couldn't hold a job. At night I would take my gun out of my desk drawer—"

"John."

John shrugged, his gaze still distant. "We've saved each other so many times since we met that I've lost count. But that first time? That first time you saved my life, Sherlock. I was so alone…"

"John"

"And then I wasn't." John blinked rapidly, giving him an awkward half-smile. "And I've never had an opportunity to repay that favor until now."

Sherlock shook his head, and took his finger off the syringe.

"Do you trust me?" John asked.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at his blogger. The question felt like a trap. "Don't be ridiculous."

John nodded. "Do you trust Molly?"

Sherlock leaned back, feeling the scrape of the wall on the back of his neck. He didn't bother to reply. John already knew the answer.

"I can't tell you how to be with her. It doesn't work like that." John said, twisting his wedding ring absently. "Giving yourself to someone—it's not about _knowing_."

"Very helpful," Sherlock said.

John huffed out a laugh of acknowledgement. "Listen, you know that moment in a case when you know something is wrong, but you can't see it yet? When you have all the pieces, but you can't quite deduce the whole picture? When you don't know what is around the next corner, but you run anyway— leap off the roof, take the phone call, pick up the gun. Love is like that. Thrilling and confusing and…" John laughed at himself, his eyes straying to an empty spot across the alley. Sherlock straightened, sensing Mary's presence in the haunting sorrow that ghosted around John's smile.

John looked at him, and Sherlock felt the intensity of his gaze like a hammer against his chest. John lifted an eyebrow. "I won't lie to you. It's truly fucking terrifying. But I can promise you one thing Sherlock—it's never dull."

* * *

The music would have woken her if she had been asleep.

Molly had heard him come in, of course. Had listened as he paused at the door, and felt his gaze burn across the line of her spine. She couldn't guess what he was thinking. She had somehow managed to keep her breathing steady despite the gallop of her heart.

Eventually he had moved on.

She had laid still, counting the stitches on the couch cushion and listened to the soft jingle of his keys hitting the desk; the creak of the door as he hung up his coat; and then the agonizing click of the bathroom door.

Molly squeezed her eyes shut when the shower turned on. _Oh god._

She pulled Mrs. Hudson's afghan over her ears and tried not to hear the subtle changing in the water pressure as Sherlock stepped into the shower. Tried not to imagine the way the warm water would pull down his curls, the soap catching in the hollow of his collarbone before sliding further down his lean body. Molly squeezed her eyes shut. The throbbing between her legs kept time with the beat of her pulse.

She was so absorbed with not listening that she almost didn't hear when he padded quietly back into the sitting room. Her whole body ached from staying still, but she didn't dare move as he puttered quietly around the flat behind her.

The window slid open. He settled into his chair with a squeak of leather.

She wanted to crawl back into his lap. Wanted to press her nose to the pale column of his neck and breath in the smell of soap and skin. Wanted to take him apart with her fingertips. Need quivered in the lining of her stomach. She didn't move.

She heard the hushed snap of a match being lit. The scent of smoke drifted over to her. A brief pause. The back of her neck pricked.

"Molly?" he said quietly. The deep timber of his voice shivered across her heart. She closed her eyes. Silence fell.

She could hear him breathing, the soft exhalation of smoke. The seconds slowly changed to minutes, the only sound the tap of his fingers on the keys of his laptop. Her muscles loosened. The breeze ruffled the edges of her hair, cool on the nape of her neck. The minutes stretched.

She was almost dozing, hovering at the warm threshold of sleep and reality, when she heard the scrape of his chair. Her eyes blinked open at the muffled thud of hollow wood, the soft vibration of his finger across a single string. She glanced up at the wall, watching the shadow of his figure tuck the violin against his chin.

She wasn't prepared for the first soft note—still and lonely in the quiet flat. Wasn't ready for the slow tremor of the melody cutting into her skin.

It was a beautiful song—aching in its quiet simplicity; so foreign from anything she knew about Sherlock that she had to press a hand to her stomach to keep from turning around. To keep herself still as the music rose to fill the crevices in the ceiling, gentle and filled with longing.

She barely breathed as the music changed and doubled, an impossibly intricate dance of notes, as if another violinist crept into the flat and joined. Molly brought a hand to her lips. The new melody was low and tortured, a complicated contradiction to the delicate first notes. Light and dark sharing the same song.

It should have been impossible for one instrument to make both of those sounds. Two voices twisting together like lovers— filling up the space around her lungs.

She sat up.

The room was dark, the fire cold and sleeping. Sherlock stood with his eyes closed, a thin shadow against the frame of the window, his fingers dancing across the strings as he played. His dressing gown flowed around his legs as he swayed with the music, his body bent around the violin as it sang.

The tempo of the song shifted, transforming into something complicated and urgent. His brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to restrain the frantic pace of the notes. The bow cried over the strings, each note edged with desperation.

Molly moved silently through the swirling storm of the music to the window opposite from him. He made no indication that he heard her. She leaned against the cold glass and watched him. The moonlight curled across his forehead and tangled in his lashes. Molly had never seen anything more beautiful then his face.

The violin sang out anger and despair. The music was genius of a different sort. The beauty and restraint of the composition would have felt at home inside the walls of a soaring cathedral—the song strained against the confines of the small flat.

Sherlock curled around the stradivarius, the priceless instrument an extension of his own thin body. She wondered if he saw the notes played out like numbers in his head, a mathematical equation of rhythm and melody stripped down to cold hard perfection.

She didn't think so.

Standing there, the music crying from him through the pretense of the violin, his curls soft and wild around his head, Molly thought that she was seeing Sherlock for the first time. Seeing past his magnificent mind and the cloak of arrogance to the man underneath.

And she didn't understand.

Didn't understand why he was giving it to her. Was painfully afraid that this song was a parting gift.

His eyes opened—met hers across the dark room, a silver gray storm that stole her breath. His fingers never faltered, but the music shifted into something dark and seductive.

A tempest giving way to the still night sky. The song curled like vapor inside of her, hot and silky. She held his gaze as the music touched her in all the places that she wanted him to touch her.

His gaze flickered over her body, and Molly remembered that she was wearing one of his shirts and nothing more. That she had nicked it from his closet and slipped it over her head before heading off to bed, not expecting him to return to Baker Street tonight. The silk of the midnight blue shirt slipped against her heated skin, just brushing the tops of her thighs.

He was looking and playing—the bow drawing across the strings in slow languid notes that dripped with sex and suggestion.

Desperation surged through her—the reality of a one last chance settling like sharp ice inside her veins. She couldn't just let him go. Couldn't let him disappear back into the cold lonely space he held himself in.

So Molly leaned back against the window ledge, the edges of the shirt riding up to the top of her thighs. She settled her hand on the skin there, letting her thumb absently caress soft circles into her flesh. Let her fingertips slip underneath the hem of the shirt—not touching herself, but letting him see—letting him think it.

She heard the mistake.

Heard the bow hitch upon the strings as she wet her lips. She smiled in triumph. He shook his head at her, his eyes narrowing, and Molly laughed softly. Something very much like joy penetrating the deep shadows around her heart.

This is how they could be. Strange and unpredictable. Different but happy.

The music slowed, folding in on itself. The complicated war of notes falling away to a simple melody once again. His chest rose and fell rapidly, as if the song were stealing his breath too.

The song became delicate and plaintive. A painful question without an answer. His eyes squeezed shut as the last note fell upon the faded rug. He lowered his bow, his chin still cradling the violin.

Molly tucked her hair behind her ear and looked out onto the quiet street while the echo of the notes drifted around them. She didn't want to look at him. Was afraid her shattered heart couldn't take the regret carefully etched on the marble of his face. Or god help her, the pity.

Her fingers curled into a fist on her thigh. She was ready to fight for him, yes. The strong women inside of her raged and fought, stepping out of the ash of surrender and demanding courage. Molly took an unsteady breath.

She was quite sure that she stood on the final battle ground. Her last desperate argument against a broken genius. The odds were not good. If she made one wrong move, he would fade back into Sherlock Holmes. Brilliant and alone. Cold and untouchable.

"Molly?"

He had moved around the desk, his hands empty at his sides.

She had always liked him like this-in a simple gray shirt and loose pajama pants. His shirt was inside out so the collar wouldn't rub against his skin. She loved knowing that detail about him, trivial and unimportant. But she wanted to know more.

He looked deceptively soft and approachable. Almost normal if you didn't look too closely at the razor sharp intelligence gleaming out of his shifting eyes.

"I know what you're going to say," she said to the cold glass window.

From the corner of her eye, she saw his eyebrow arch. "I highly doubt that."

"You think this won't work." She put her bare foot on the window ledge, leaning her chin on her knee, well aware of the way the tails of the shirt barely covered her lap. His breathing changed.

"It won't," he said simply, drifting closer. "There is no place for this in my life." She felt him gesture helplessly between them. "The Work is the only fulfillment I require. There is no need for... _this._ For you."

The words were brutal, but Molly flinched instead at the tone of his voice-soft and sorry. As if she were a child. As if she couldn't see the lust written in the tempo of his pulse and the shift of his lean hips. Fire blazed to life in the pit of her stomach.

She leaned forward slightly, letting the collar of his shirt slip off her shoulder. She didn't have to see his face to know that he traced the movement with his eyes.

"You've miscalculated," she said.

He paused, squared his shoulders. Stepped closer. "Unlikely."

She tilted her head to look at him, resting her cheek on her knee. He was close now, just a couple of feet away. His seawater eyes were distant and cool, no trace of the man who had given himself so passionately to the music. He looked unmovable.

She put her leg down and flicked open the next button of her shirt, the silk sliding open to reveal the soft swell of her breast. His hand twitched at his side.

She wondered if he knew that his body was betraying him.

"You've missed one important piece of the data."

His brow furrowed, his eyes drifted to where the street light and starlight danced across the skin of her chest. She leaned back, watching his face.

"I don't care if you love me."

Startled, his eyes whipped up from where they were tracing fire across the skin of her thighs. He frowned, turning over her words in his head. She watched in fascination as he absorbed this new bit of information, assimilating it into the carefully crafted conclusion he had reached about her-about them.

She saw the exact moment that he decided she was lying. Molly smiled. Stubborn, stubborn man.

Sherlock peered down at her, looking every inch the famous consulting detective despite the pajamas and dressing gown. The back of his hand brushed across her arm. He shook his head. "Implausible. The data suggests..."

She slid open the third button, the shirt gaping open to her belly button. Color burned across his pale cheeks as he followed the movement.

"Stop that," he said, his deep voice gorgeously ragged. Her stomach clenched at the sound.

She turned toward him, the outside of her bare thigh brushing the inside of his. Her fingers gripped the window sill, not looking up. "I don't want anything from you, you stupid man. You don't have to change who you are to be with me." She gestured around the flat. "I'm already here. I want this. You. Everything."

Molly swallowed the fear that rattled in her throat, stepping over the corpse of her own dignity. "I'm already yours."

Silence. The white noise of the street drifted through the window. She thought she could still feel the ghost of the music still vibrating in the molecules around them as if they too were waiting for his answer. She ducked her head, unable to look at his face as the seconds ticked by, as her hope faded along with the dying music. She traced the hollow of his throat with her eyes instead, watching the rise and fall of his chest and the fragile bones of his wrist.

"There is a 78% chance that we are incompatible."

Molly looked up, but his mercury eyes were unfocused and unreadable. She twisted the corner of the shirt in her fingers. He paced away from her suddenly, scrubbing a hand through his curls. She stood up, pressing back into the shadows.

He threw up his hands, seeming to address the skull. "Approximately 3 out of 4 relationships dissolve within the first 12 months. All the current scientific data suggests that the human race is nearly incapable of maintaining healthy romantic relationships. Monogamy appears to be a construct of the human psyche." Sherlock whirling, pointing at her, as if she were a witness in one of his cases. "Pursuing sexual intimacy in the flimsy hopes of adequate companionship is tedious and likely a waste of time."

He stopped in the center of the room and crossed his arms. "It is not worth the risk."

Molly tilted her head and pretended to consider, ignoring her thundering heart. She shook her head and smiled gently. "No."

He arched an eyebrow. "No is not a sufficient argument."

Molly huffed out a laugh, "This isn't a debate, Sherlock. Being with someone isn't about thinking-it is about doing."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "Thinking _is_ what I do," he said, his voice clipped and final. He turned his back to her, his hands braced against the mantle. She could read the rejection in the tight line of his shoulders.

She swallowed. It was time. She only had one more card to play.

Molly's hand's were shaking as she worked the last button free, but she kept her spine straight and stepped into the pool of light shimmering across the floor, letting the shirt fall from her shoulders in a quiet hiss of silk. Sherlock tensed, his knuckled suddenly white against the mantle.

He didn't move. Molly stood naked and alone with her toes curled into the thick rug. She felt brittle, like the thinnest glass. Oh god, she loved him.

For a moment she was still, desperately trying to wrestle the fear out of her voice. Trying to piece together her last fragile argument.

Sherlock shook his head, his voice low and on edge, "Molly, I-"

"If you weren't Sherlock Holmes..." she interupted quietly, "If it were just you and me standing here in this flat, if there was no one who would _see_..."

He turned, his face half hidden in shadows. Molly didn't miss the heat that flickered in his eyes as he looked at her. She swallowed and forced herself not to trip and stutter over the last words. "Sherlock," she said, with a small shake of her head, "if there was no on in the world looking...what would you _want_?"

It was a desperate move. Dirty and unfair. Reckless. A plea to the man underneath the mind. It was below her, and she didn't fucking care.

He was still, his chest heaving slightly. For a moment, she thought it hadn't worked. That she had lost him.

And then he stepped forward, his movements suddenly graceful and sensual, as if the man who had stood there moments before had given way to something feral and new. She stood still under the flame of his gaze, molten heat curling between her legs as he stalked slowly forward. He stopped a breath away. _P_ _lease touch me._

She tilted her head back, her hair brushing the small of her back, "What do you want?" she whispered. He studied her, a slow leisurely look filled with want and possession. She could feel the wetness on the inside of her thighs and wondered if he could see.

He reached out a hand, letting one long finger trace a line down her rib cage. Her skin quivered under his touch as his nail scraped over the plane of her stomach to the crease of her thigh. She made a needy sound in the back of her throat. He smiled at the sound, and Molly was lost.

His hand slid over the curve of her hip to the small of her back, and he pulled her against him roughly. She whimpered to find him hard and ready against the softness of her belly. His fingers brushed under her jaw, tilting her head back. His seawater eyes were wild and lost. She touched his cheek, wanting to taste him. "Molly," he begged, his voice low and filled with want. She shook her head, counting the beats of her heart as she waited. His mouth hovered just over hers. She clutched at him, draw up on her toes as they hung there, the desire pulsing between them, his breath an agonizing caress across her lips.

"You can have me _,_ Sherlock," she whispered. "No expectations. You can have me." He muttered something incoherent-a denial or a plea, she never found out, and then he was kissing her.

She could have sobbed at the sweet pressure of his lips, at the sweep of his tongue against her own. Molly tangled her fingers in his hair and pressed closer. He tasted like smoke and surrender.


	11. Chapter 11

**For the record, the author of this fiction does not condone drug use, unprotected sex, tricking your friend into thinking you are dead for two years, smoking as a coping mechanism, or shooting anyone in the face even if they are a slimy asshole.**

 **Also, it is inadvisable to throw ones self naked in front of a man.**

 **Unless that man is Sherlock Holmes playing you violin music in the moonlight-then you should definitely do that shit. ;)**

Chapter 11

Sherlock meant to be gentle.

But Molly was kissing him, her body quivering like vibrato under his fingertips and suddenly it wasn't so much a kiss but an assault—lips and teeth and shattered breath.

His tongue swept against hers, demanding and desperate. She touched him as he explored her mouth—her fingers tangling in his hair, skimming across his jaw, and rucking up his shirt to trace each of his ribs. Teasing, light touches that sent sparks of electricity scorching across his skin.

He pulled back a fraction, grazing her bottom lip with his teeth, slowing the kiss down to something languid and lazy. She rose on her toes, fingernails biting into his back. He catalogued her breathless moan as his tongue found hers again, tilting her jaw with his palm to kiss her deeper-learning and taking all at the same time.

She should have tasted like comfort.

It was just Molly, after all—familiar and ordinary—even standing naked in the moonlight.

But there was nothing simple about the woman burning in his arms. She was a concerto sweeping toward him in a dark concert hall, exquisite and complicated. His fingers tightened between the wings of her shoulder blades as if he could press her into the hollow space behind his breastbone.

Her hands dipped under the waist band of his pajamas, settling into the hollows of his hip bones. He stiffened. She was still kissing him, but suddenly his attention was on her wandering fingers. Her thumb brushed against his erection, and Sherlock tore his mouth away with a strangled sound. She laughed, the sound spinning out inside of him-catching fire wherever it touched.

He pressed his forehead against hers, desperately trying to hide the fact that she was breaking him apart. That her skin and lips and heat were tearing down the ancient walls around his heart. Her knuckles brushed against his throbbing length again, firm and deliberate. He couldn't help the shudder that racked his body.

She arched an eyebrow, her face flushed, but a whisper of a smile curling her swollen lips. A challenge.

He narrowed his eyes. Some part of himself that he didn't recognize lifted her into the air and settled her against him. She made a desperate sound, her heels digging into his back. Her eyes darkened, liquid and molasses.

She had three freckles on the curve of her neck, and he bent his head to taste them. Molly's head fell back as he sampled her skin. He could feel the heat of her through the thin fabric of his pajamas—could feel the hot dampness that gathered there. She tilted her hips, pressing that wet heat against his hard flesh. Something dark and needy shifted in the cellar of his soul.

He tried to pause, his lips resting against the thin skin of her neck. He closed his eyes and counted the frantic beats of her heart, giving himself time to coil the taut rope of control back inside him.

But Molly wasn't having any of it. She rocked against him. He groaned.

In one smooth movement, he lowered her to the ground, never breaking contact as he captured her mouth roughly and settled between her legs. She writhed up against him, incoherent and lost. He was painfully hard, blinded by the feel of her soft and willing underneath him. Sherlock pushed her hip down to the floor hard, holding her away from where he wanted her as he claimed her lips again.

She should have silk sheets and soft music. Someone who would cherish and love her the way she deserved. But he was going to take her right here on the rug. Fast and reckless. Hard and punishing. Because he needed to be inside of her—needed to drive into her slick heat until the sharp edges in his chest dulled and softened.

He didn't deserve her. She was innocent and beautiful. The darkness inside of him...

Sherlock ripped his mouth away, pressing his forehead against her shoulder as he tried to catch his breath. Tried to slow down. Tried to _get control_.

"Shut up," Molly breathed, her teeth nipping at his earlobe, sending fissions of pleasure skittering through his gut. "I can hear you thinking," she teased, her tongue doing obscene things to the side of his throat.

His breath caught. He didn't know it would be like this. It was madness. He tried to relax the bruising pressure of his fingers on her waist. She ran a single finger down his spine, an anchor in a sea of madness.

He couldn't look at her directly. The sight of her stretched out on the faded red of the rug, her hair fanned out, her cheeks flush. It was too much.

He needed to get to the other side of this sharp pleasure. He reached for the waistband of his pajamas with a shaking hand.

She caught his wrist, stopping him, "Sherlock."

He tugged his hand away and didn't look up. There was something in her voice. A warning or a plea, he wasn't sure. Wasn't capable of caring-could see no way of stopping the momentum of desire now that he had succumb. Now that he was drowning.

So he ignored her, bending his head to lap at one peaked nipple. She gasped, her back bowing up toward him as he lavished the tender flesh.

"Sherlock!" She tugged at his hair, but he was too busy kissing his way down the velvet plane of her belly. She muttered something indistinguishable under her breath. His lips found the crease at the top of her thigh.

And then her hands were on his face, digging into his cheekbones, trying to pull him away. He growled in annoyance.

"Someone's coming," she gasped out as his lips found the edge of her damp curls.

He stopped.

Somehow he stopped and looked up at her through the fringe of his hair. She groaned, her cheeks flushing further when she met his eye. Her head thumped on the floor and she cursed, her hips undulating helplessly toward his mouth even as they heard Mrs Hudson answer the front door downstairs.

Sherlock squinted at the open doorway from their compromising place on the floor. He shook his head, trying to clear the red haze of lust from his eyes. She was so warm and close. He could smell her, wet and willing underneath him.

He was panting a little, need boiling inside of him. Someone was coming. Sherlock's rusty thoughts tried to rumble back to life.

It was late. Well past midnight. There was only one person who would be coming up the stairs at this hour.

He slid back up her, covering her nakedness with his body. "Oh god," Molly whimpered as they settled back against each other. She closed her eyes.

They breathed and listened to the familiar voice of a certain Detective Inspector drifted up to them from the staircase. Sherlock shifted his hips, sliding against her with agonizing slowness. Molly threw back her head at the feeling, and he couldn't help but lean down to taste the smooth column of her neck.

Down on the landing, Mrs. Hudson laughed. They had to stop. Molly arched against him. He placed his palm flat on the floor, fingers curling into the rug. His teeth scrapped against her pulse. The voices moved closer.

"God damn, cocksucker Greg," Sherlock muttered viciously against her skin.

Molly stilled. And then giggled. "Sherlock!" she hissed.

He braced himself on his forearm and looked down at her. Her eyes danced up at him, and he was unable to keep the answering grin off his face, despite the heat that threatened to consume him. She shook her head with a little laugh. "I don't think I've ever heard you swear before."

His heart clenched painfully at the sight of her underneath him, laughing and lovely.

He thought of another moment, in a rundown motel room. Unable to help himself, Sherlock leaned forward, resting his lips against the shell of her ear. "Yes—you have," he breathed. "Once."

Molly shivered, and he almost lost control again. Almost took her right there—observers be damned.

Footsteps on the stairs broke through the thick haze. He bit out another curse, more colorful then the last and pulled them both up in one graceful movement.

She wobbled, and he pressed his palm into the hollow of her back to steady her. She touched his face, her thumb brushing his bottom lip before he propelled her gently toward his bedroom.

Sherlock watched the way the shadows dipped into the curve of her spine as she slipped silently away. It was cold in the flat, the night air blowing in gently through the still open window. A chill raise the hairs on the back of his neck.

Molly paused at his bedroom door, her hand resting on the doorjamb. Her hair was a tousled mess around her head, her whole body flushed with desire. She looked over her shoulder at him—a siren—a breathing Botticelli. _His._

She worried her bottom lip with her teeth as their eyes met across the empty space. She looked unsure—as if the spell had been broken. Sherlock wrapped his dressing gown around him tighter and turned away.

Maybe it had.

* * *

Sherlock managed to flop into his chair moments before Lestrade appeared at the top of the stairs. He tented his fingers underneath his chin, willing his hands to remain steady through sheer stubbornness.

Greg cleared his throat, hovering in the doorway. Sherlock didn't bother looking around. "Leave."

From the corner of his eye he saw Lestrade rock back on his heels. Sherlock ground his teeth together and stared up at the ceiling. The Inspector leaned against the door jam and did not leave. Sherlock sighed. Maybe it was time to break in a new contact at the Yard.

Greg crossed his arms. "I know it's late and all mate...but this ones got your name all over it. Thought you'd fancy a look."

Sherlock closed his eyes, trying to ignore the desire that hummed in his veins. His clothes felt tight, each brush of fabric against his sensitive skin a fresh sort of hell. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind, but it was like thinking through mud.

A case. He couldn't just dismiss it because of rudimentary biology and flimsy sentiment. He was Sherlock Holmes.

"Tell me."

Greg nodded and ventured a step into the apartment. "Male. Age 28. Good health. Out in his back yard with a bunch of his blokes having a pint. Dropped dead on his lawn. Coroner dug this scrap of metal out of his skull."

Sherlock rolled his head to the side, narrowing his eyes on the evidence bag. Even in the dark he could see that it held a tiny piece of crumpled metal, the size of a fingernail. Fresh blood streaked the inside of the plastic.

"Any ideas?" Lestrade asked hopefully.

"Yes." Sherlock sneered, "Location?"

Sherlock pressed his fingertips to his eyes as Lestrade rattled off the address. Thank god. Even an idiot could solve this case.

He leaped to his feet. The DI took a step back as Sherlock advanced on him, spun him around, and shoved him out of the flat. "Hey!" Greg protested as Sherlock started to slam the door, just managing to get his foot in the door before it closed. Greg glared at him through the narrow opening. "Just tell me, you arrogant git."

Sherlock shook his head, "Bit obvious, don't you think Inspector?"

Greg huffed, "Listen—"

"Airplane refuse," Sherlock snapped impatiently. Greg shook his head in bewilderment. "Dear lord, you aren't getting any smarter, are you Detective? You will find that his flat was on the flightpath from Heathrow. There is a .002% chance of being hit by flying shrapnel from an overhead plane—unlikely but not statistically impossible."

Sherlock leaned into the gap in the doorway. "Come back when you have something interesting," he snarled, before slamming the door.

Sherlock waited, with one palm flat against the wood, as Greg called him unkind names on the landing. Waited until his footsteps faded and the cab pulled away from the curb. Waited till thick silence bled back into the flat.

He turned back to the empty sitting room. It was the same as always, but also foreign as if something fundamental had shifted since the moment Molly had uncurled from the couch to watch him play. The ghostly shadows of the two chairs looked lonely in front of the cold fireplace.

He should leave. Follow Greg out into the night. Hail a cab and let the streets of London swallow him.

But somehow he found himself standing at the end of his own dark hallway instead.

The door to his bedroom was closed. It was only a few feet away. Just two long strides at best. He took a breath. It seemed farther.

Pale light cut across the floor from the crack underneath the door. He tilted his head, trying to hear something over the thunder of his heart. It was quiet. _She_ was quiet. Waiting.

He crossed the hallway, resting his hand on the doorknob. It was cool under his touch.

He stopped again. This was a different kind of decision. With her safely behind this door, he could think. He could turn the full force of his intellect on the problem that was Molly Hooper. Sherlock leaned his forehead against the door jam.

He wanted her. That was painfully clear. Every fibre of his animal-self leaned toward her invisible presence on the other side of the thin door. Screamed at him to get on with it already—to open the door and take and take and _take_.

Sherlock closed his eyes. It was just simple chemistry.

And yet.

He had always known that love was a dangerous disadvantage. Had seen it played out a thousand times in nearly every case he worked. But this was different. This desire-it was cunning and devastating. An enemy he didn't know how to fight. Sherlock swallowed.

Everything he had done up until this moment could be justified. Just endorphins dancing through his brain, Nature's brutal alchemy blurring the line between want and need.

But once he opened this door, he was admitting that the weakness of the body could win against the ruthless logic he held dear. He would be letting his heart rule his head.

Sherlock turned the knob.

Molly stood in the center of the small room. She had wrapped herself in the soft gray blanket that he usual kept on the end of his bed, not an inch of skin visible from the hollow of her throat down to the top of her bare feet. She watched with quiet eyes as he closed the door and leaned against it.

She had tried to fix her hair. He could imagine her brushing it with her fingers as she wandered around his room, touching the collection of small bones on the dresser and the silver cufflinks Mary had given him for the wedding. She had dragged her hair over one shoulder, twisting it into a loose, unbound pony tail. She looked like Molly again. Quiet and steady.

She fiddled with the fringe of the blanket, twisting it around her fingers as she waited for him to speak. He took an unsteady breath and stepped closer. She smiled at him, tentative and hopeful, the sweet curve of her lips pressing the air out of his lungs.

He was a fool.

There was no decision to be made here. It had been made long ago.

He touched the hem of his shirt. It was ragged around the edges—soft and familiar.

There was so much to say, but he had no idea how to say it. There was no data to be analyzed. No facts to be broken down. There was just the two of them, standing on a cliff in his small room.

He shook his head and tugged his shirt off. Molly made a small choking sound, but he didn't look up. Before he could loose his nerve—before he could think—he shucked off his pajama pants, kicking them away. Sherlock's hands curled into his fists at his sides as he stood still under Molly's gaze in only his thin black pants.

Nudity had never been something he concerned himself with. His body was just a vehicle for his mind. But this was different.

He forced himself not to cross his arms around his waist. He had lost weight. Sleep deprivation had eaten into his lean body, carving hollows into his clavicle and pelvis. His pale skin was littered with scars, each one telling a story more brutal then the next.

His fingers hesitated on the waistband of his pants.

John had called him a machine once. He almost wished it were true, that beneath his skin lay cold hard metal. That inside the thin cage of his ribs lay nothing but twisted wire.

"Wait."

He stopped, looking up at as she stepped closer, the tail of the blanket trailing behind her.

"Let me."

Sherlock wanted to reach for her. Wanted to go back to the moment on the rug when there were no thoughts, only sensation and skin. Just his body and what it craved.

Because this was something new. This was surrender-terrifying and soft.

But he held still. Because the decision had been made.

Her dark eyes were serious as she trailed a finger across the bullet wound on his abdomen and the raised whip marks on his shoulders. If she had doubts about the truth of being with him, there was no hiding now. The broken parts of him were written across his skin like a map.

He put his lips in her hair as her hands flattened on the trembling muscles of his stomach. "Molly," he breathed against her temple. She slid off his pants without touching him. He let out one hard breath as her fingers danced back up his body, leaving fire wherever they landed.

She stepped away. To his mortification, he almost stumbled, the air suddenly thin and empty in her absence.

Molly tilted her chin, her eyes a dark mystery. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and nodded, "Okay."

Alarm rang through him. It occurred to him that he was quite out of his depth. That this was one area where he was hopelessly uninformed. Sherlock swallowed. "I don't-I'm not-"

Molly smiled and it was like falling into the sun. "What do you want to _do_ , Sherlock?" she asked, her voice husky. "To me, I mean..." She bit her lip, the gesture somehow wonton and innocent all at the same time. Need swept through him-visceral and unrelenting. "What do you want to do to me?"

His hands twitched. It was a dangerous question. There were many things he wanted to do now that desire was unfurling inside of him. Nameless things intended for dark bedrooms.

"Come here," he said.

She came back to him, and he reached out to untangle her fingers from where they were knotted tightly in the edges of the blanket. A tremor ran though her as the blanket slid off her shoulders.

Just a whisper of heated air separated their bodies. It was like standing on the lip of a volcano. He wanted to press them together-to step into that fire and burn.

Instead, he touched her jaw, tilting her head up gently. He brushed a stray hair out of her eyes before leaning down and feathered their lips together. It was more mingled breath than a kiss. She sighed against his mouth.

He kissed the corner of her lips, and then fell slowly to his knees, worshiping her skin as he went. She buried her hands in his hair as he kissed the flat of her stomach. "I want to taste you," he whispered against her skin. She shuddered

Sherlock didn't give her time to respond, dipping his head to slip a tongue between her legs. Her fingers clenched painfully in his curls. " _Oh._ " she breathed and the sound was more beautiful than the most intimate sonata.

She tasted like sex. Like salt and skin and woman. He closed his eyes, teasing her with his tongue until her legs quivered. He held her steady with his hands, tasting and taking until she was making lost frantic noises above his head.

"I can't-Sherlock stop. I'm going to..."

He hummed against her damp flesh, letting his fingers touch just inside her knee. He nudged her legs apart gently, licking in deeper as his hand trailed up her thigh.

She got quiet. As if sounds were no longer necessary, her body speaking to his through the thick heated air in an ancient language.

He slipped two fingers inside of her tight heat and she broke around him, sobbing and shaking.

He caught her as she started to fall, one hand firm on the center of her back as he swept her onto the bed, his thumb still pressed against her sensitive folds as she came apart in his arms. He knelt over her, his erection heavy against her thigh.

He had never wanted more. Sherlock buried his face in her neck, trying to breath as the tremors crashing through Molly slowed. She arched against him blindly, clinging to his back. His arousal nudged at her entrance, aching and hard. He groaned. He wanted to slide inside of her. Wanted it more than he had every wanted anything.

But he needed her with him.

He lifted onto his forearms so he could look into her face. Her eyes were dark with desire-wild and lost. He pushed away a damp strand of hair that clung to her writhed against him, the tip of his dripping length slipping just inside of her. She clawed at his back. "Now," she begged. "Oh, god please now."

He pushed inside of her with one smooth movement, swallowing both their cries. She was impossibly tight, still pulsing with her last release. He stopped, his stomach muscles clenching around the imploding nucleus of pleasure radiating from where they were joined.

He wasn't prepared for this. Wasn't sure if he would ever be prepared.

Sherlock tore his mouth away from hers, his teeth grazing her pulse as he tried to slow the erratic pace of his heart. Tried to draw out the moment. "Sherlock," she choked out, her head bowing back as she tilted her hips, taking him deeper.

He caught the curve of her spine with one hand, his palm holding her up at a steep angle as he pulled out, soaking up the sounds of her desperate pleading before plunging back inside of her.

There was no more time for finesse. No time to worry about her pleasure, or his inexperience or anything but the tight pulse of her around him. But somehow she was with him-like she always was. Her hand on his hip, guiding him as he thrust relentlessly, each movement hurtling them closer to the edge.

She surged up to capture his mouth. Some distant part of him knew that he was murmuring her name over and over against her lips, the word torn from his throat and mixed with desperate, wild curses.

He drove into her once more, lost in her wet heat, reduced to just chemistry and the body and unbearable agony of wanting.

The orgasm hit him unexpectedly, a molten wave that left him shaking and spilling inside of her. She followed, crying into his mouth as she rode through her own release. The whole world narrowing to just Molly breaking into pieces around him and the razor sharp pleasure tearing through the last jagged shreds of his heart.

He buried his face in her hair, pressing her into the mattress as the world drifted back in small pieces. The tick of the clock on his bedside table. The sweet smell of her hair. The rise and fall of her chest.

He was crushing her, but she didn't seem to mind, her body curled around him-warm and familiar.

He never wanted to move. Never wanted to open his eyes again. There was just this. Sherlock wondered idly why he had ever thought anything could matter more than this one quiet moment. Molly trailed a finger down his spine absently. Her lips caressed the skin of his neck.

He drifted, boneless and content, still buried inside of her.

And so he almost missed it.

Almost missed the three familiar words that she whispered soundlessly against his neck. Words that seemed to be written in her own blood upon his heart. She kissed the underside of his jaw, her lips lingering. His fingers tightened on her waist as Sherlock tried to pull her closer.

* * *

 **One more chapter to go! Thank you for all your wonderful reviews. xoxo**


	12. Chapter 12

**Final chapter. For real this time.**

 **It has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for all your lovely reviews and follows and favorites. I notice and appreciate every single one.**

Chapter 12

She woke three times before the dawn.

The first time Sherlock was tangled around her like flotsam, his breath steady and deep—a secret told inside the crook of her neck. Molly blinked up at the dark ceiling.

The sheet was bunched loosely below her bellybutton and across the sharp curve of his hip, cool against her skin. It felt real.

Molly let a fingertips feather along his shoulder, soft and real. Her lips moved silently as she counted the smattering of freckles hidden there. Too many to count. Sherlock's hand tightened on her waist, as if he were holding her in place. She took a shallow breath, afraid to wake him.

She had woken up in man's bed before, of course. Dozens of times to be honest. She was a grown ass woman thank you very much.

But this felt different.

Molly brushed a stray hair off Sherlock's forehead. His eyelashes were a dark curtain against the fine bones of his cheeks. He stirred, muttering senseless words against her skin. She pressed her palm against his spine, drawing him closer. He sighed and settled. Molly felt her throat tighten.

He didn't look like Sherlock Holmes in his sleep. The sharp lines of his face smoothed out, his tightly guarded defenses worn thin. His leg was warm and solid thrown across her own. Familiar and foreign just the same.

Sherlock shifted in his sleep, his hand trailing up her belly to settle between her breasts.

Molly swallowed, painfully aware that she was laying inside the fragile hollow of her deepest unspoken dream, her love a piece of grit trapped between the chambers of her heart.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to reign in her emotions. It wasn't the dark curls tickling her cheek that made tears prick behind her eyelids. It wasn't the vulnerable curl of his body or even the smell of him—chemicals and smoke and London rain.

It was the solid weight of his body pinning her against the mattress. The full press of him along her side, warm and real.

Molly seriously doubted he had ever slept with anyone before.

Sex? Possibly. But sharing a bed was a kind of intimacy she had never expected. Had never even thought to hope for.

But here he was, wrapped around her in his sleep, vulnerable and filled with truth. She pressed a kiss to the hollow of his temple.

He mumbled and rolled away from her onto his back. She had only had a moment to feel cold before he dragged her against his side. He tucked her against his side, his chin settling on the crown of her head.

Molly thought of a time when she was little and her father had taken her out to the countryside. She had played in the mud of a babbling river while he fished, pulling pale stones out to the water. She remembered the feel of those stones-cupped in her small damp hand, smooth and velvet. Remembered the way each one fit in her palm, cool and solid, as if it belonged there.

Molly curled her body around Sherlocks, tracing a finger down the bones of his ribs. They had things to discuss. A life to deduce. But the morning to would come soon enough. She closed her eyes and let the steady tide of his heart lull her back to sleep. As if she belonged there.

* * *

The second time she woke up, he was gone.

Molly laid still for a moment, listening to the silence of the flat and the hum of the distant city beyond. It was still dark, but she could feel morning breathing on the horizon even from the quiet bedroom.

She reached out a hand, flattening her palm against the cool sheets next to her. After a long moment, she rolled to the edge of the bed, searching blindly on the floor until her fingers found Sherlock's discarded t-shirt.

She stood up, fiddling with the frayed collar before turning the shirt inside out and slipping it over her head. The hem just skimmed the tops of her thighs. She glanced back at the empty bed, tugging on the edge of the shirt. Forcing herself not to jump to conclusions, she padded out of the bedroom, pausing in the shadows of the sitting room door.

His back was to her, one hand on the mantle as he gazed down at the crackling fire. Sherlock had slipped on his pajamas, but his chest was bare. She could see the lines of old scars cutting across his skin.

He didn't turn around, but she knew he had heard her, could feel the change in the room, as if their connection was a tangible thing thickening the atmosphere. The muscles of his back shifted under his skin as he swiped a hand over his face.

She crossed the room. He didn't move when she wrapped herself around him, flattening her palms against his chest. She pressed her cheek between his shoulder blades, listening to his sharp intake of breath as he came back to himself.

It felt strange. Touching him like this. Sherlock wove his fingers through hers where they rested against his chest. Molly wondered if it would ever feel normal. If she would ever get to a point when each gesture didn't seem like a fragile gift. She wondered if they would even get that far.

He turned in the circle of her arms. His dark curls were tousled from sleep, firelight flickering across the shallows of his face turning his skin golden. Her heart caught. His eyes were the color of lost sea glass, clear and green, as if they had never dared to be any other color on any other day.

His brow furrowed. "Molly—"

"Kiss me," she interrupted hastily, tangling her fingers in his hair.

His frown deepened. "Sorry, I don't—"

She shook her head, one knuckle drifting down the flat plane of his stomach. The muscles fluttered against her finger. "You are about to say something idiotic and man-ish," Molly said. She leaned forward and brushed her lips against pulse at the base of his neck. It jumped.

His hands circled her wrists, stopping her wandering fingers from slipping inside the front of his pajamas. "Man-ish is not a word," he countered.

She smiled up at him. "Yes well…" He arched an eyebrow. She shrugged. "Well it should be."

Sherlock laughed.

It was an easy sound—happy and strange. The low music of it danced across her skin, washing away some of the loneliness that had gathered on her shoulders. Chipping away at some of the of the despair that crowded the space around her heart.

Molly kissed him—pressed herself up against his lean frame and swallowed the end of his laughter. She could still feel the smile lingering on the curve of his lips as she slipped her tongue inside his mouth.

And then he wasn't smiling.

His hands tightened on the wings of her shoulders, pulling her onto her toes as he deepened the kiss. His teeth scraped against her bottom lip, nipping and licking his way inside her mouth. She tugged on his hair, wanting him closer, the kiss a bruise against her lips.

His searching fingers dipped below the hem of her shirt until he was cupping her backside, fitting her up again him. He was hard beneath the thin fabric of his pajamas, and she was throbbing and wet where they pressed together. Need rippled through her like wildfire, as if she hadn't already had him. As if it was the first time.

Molly's fingernails cut into his back as she wondered vaguely when the sharp point of this passion between them would subside. Or if all the years of suppressed wanting would burn them up before they could even begin to quench it.

He pulled back, panting, his lips tasting the sensitive skin below her ear. It wasn't enough. Molly made a desperate sound and fumbled at his waistband, desperate trying to push it aside. Anything to get him inside her.

Right here on the floor. Or against the mantel. Or standing in the goddamn sitting room. Just—

Molly yelped when he set her down abruptly, pushing her away in one rough movement. She managed to catch herself on the edge of John's chair, wobbling ungracefully before looking up at him in shook. Several feet away, Sherlock had his hand up as if to ward her off, his chest heaving.

Molly pressed her thighs together, her fingers curling around the chair. A shudder ran through her. God, she was so close so soon. It shouldn't be possible to want another person so much. Her whole body felt flush, as if she had spent too much time in the sun.

Sherlock frowned at her, his eyes dilated and slightly wild, as he took another unsteady step away from her. Molly forced herself to take a deep breath, wishing the air could cool the inferno he had ignited, trying to think.

"We already did that," Sherlock said, straightening his spine as if to shake off the flames of desire.

Molly blinked at him, her mind sluggish from his touch, and tried to understand. Sherlock huffed out a breath. "I have spent a lifetime controlling the baser needs of the body. To think that we would…after we just…" He shook his head, crossing his arms. "It is unnecessary."

Despite herself, Molly stifled a laugh. "You mean sex?"

Sherlock nodded stiffly.

Molly let the heat show in her eyes as her gaze drift down to where his body was telling a different story altogether. She arched an eyebrow. "You don't want to have sex with me again tonight?"

He swallowed, color touching the elegant sweep of his cheeks, and crossed his arms. "I think we should discuss the parameters of this…this…"

"Relationship?" she supplied helpfully.

Sherlock looked a little sick. "I need to know what is required of me. This is not my area of expertise."

Molly stood up. "You don't say."

He stiffened and turned back to the fire. "Now you are mocking me."

"I would never do that," she said firmly, thinking of all the insults he must have endure over his lifetime. She stepped closer, so she could see the shadow of his profile. "Tell me," she said. Sherlock took down the skull on the mantel, turning it in his hands.

"This will never work." There was desperation his voice—pleading.

Alarm bells went off inside of her. The fire was warm against her hip, but she suddenly wishing for a dressing gown or her mother's tattered quilt that lived at the foot of her own small bed. Anything to wrap around her. Anything to protect her from the regret buried behind the prism of his eyes.

Sherlock shook his head, his voice catching on each broken word. "I can't give you normal Molly. I can't do evenings in front of the telly or date nights to Angelo's. I can't do holiday's to Brighton or kiss your mum's cheek on Christmas Eve. I can't do marriage. It's not who I am."

Molly studied him as he stared down at the flames. He looked miserable.

And suddenly it clicked, each fact of him settling into place like the hidden tumblers inside a lock. It wasn't that he didn't want her. He did. But he was terrified that she would say she loved him, only to try to change him in the end. Like everyone did. Molly wanted to touch him, this brilliant man who didn't fit in the world. So he was miserable—wanting something that he was afraid would destroy him. She understood all too well.

Molly turned to the fire, hugging her arms around her waist. And made herself think about what she would be giving up.

Made herself think about the wedding that she would never have. The white dress and the flowers. The sweet easy man that she would never grow old with. The small modest house she would never own. The children she would never rock to sleep. She made herself think about the quiet life she would never have.

Molly fingered the pile of notes under the dagger stabbed into the mantel. Little clues from each of his cases. Missing pieces to a puzzle he was trying to solve. Beside the knife was a crime scene photo of a dead women, her bloated body still half submerged in the Thames. He had scribbled in the margins, his handwriting elegant but illegible. Underneath the photograph was a small rusty tin. Molly touched it with one fingertip. She knew it held a single cigarette and the shattered remains of the bullet they had dug out of Sherlock's side. Mary's bullet.

Molly shook her head and wondered what wrong with her. Wondered what made her want this strange, mercurial, brilliant man more than then a normal life.

She looked back at him. It wasn't really a choice was it? That was the lie about real love. It wasn't a choice at all.

Sherlock's head was down, one finger tapping nervously against the mantel. She shifted closer to the fire, balancing one foot on top of the other, her toes curling on the cool tiles. When he finally looked up, Molly could see what waiting for her response had cost him. Could see it in the anguish sketched around the lines of his eyes and the mask of casual indifference he was still trying to wear.

She reached out and put her hand over his, stilling his nervous tick. "Ordinary is boring," she said gently.

He wanted to believe her. She could see it in the relief that eclipsed his face. After a long moment, he scoffed. "You're just saying that. One day, you will wake up beside me and realize that you are trapped. You will wish that you had never let your body control your thinking. The norms of society dictate—"

"No." she interrupted quietly.

He frowned. "But surely, marriage is an import—"

She touched his chest, her thumb dipping lightly into the hollow at the base his throat. "Just you."

He huffed. "Is it always going to be like this when we try to engage in a serious conversation?"

She tugged on his hand, walking backwards toward the bedroom. "Only until you stop obstinately denying the nature of our relationship."

He followed her reluctantly. "I'm away a lot. I won't call."

"Yes. I know," she said, turning to lead him through the empty kitchen.

"My work is dangerous. I could die at any moment."

"Try not to," she called over her shoulder as they reached the hallway.

He cleared his throat, pulling her to a halt at the threshold of his bedroom. She stepped into him, pressing him against the doorframe. His hand gripped her shoulder, holding her back. "I'm a horrible flatmate. I play the violin constantly. Sometimes I don't speak for days."

Molly laughed. "I accept your conditions with one small amendment." She touched the corner of his mouth, leaning closer.

"If this has to do with copulation—" he said.

Molly pulled away abruptly and held up a finger. "Rule one of our new relationship—never call it copulation again."

His brow lifted, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "But that is what—"

Without warning, she slid down the front of him and dropped to her knees. His words trailed off.

She looked up. He shook his head, but she saw the way his hand groped for the door jam as she leaned forward and breathed against him.

"Molly," he warned, his voice a low rumble in the pit of her belly.

Without breaking his gaze, she let her lips brush where dampness had gathered at the tip of his arousal. His breath hitched. She pressed an open kiss to the tempting line of hair that disappeared beneath his waistband. The muscles under her tongue clenched.

She pulled back the elastic of his pajamas, licking a firm line up the hard ridge of him, tasting the salt of him. His knuckles whitened. She touched the tip of his erection with one finger, gathering the moisture there before she sat back on her heels. Molly put the finger in her mouth and smiled innocently up at him.

He made a strangled sound, the hard animal glint of ownership unveiled in his silver eyes. That look spoke of taking. Of wanting. Of barely controlled need.

Heat curled between her legs. She cleared her throat, aware of the flush that crept up her neck. "You haven't heard my amendment."

He didn't respond, his breath coming fast and hard. She should have felt vulnerable, kneeling in front of him half naked, but Molly knew she held all the power now. And it wasn't just the sex. She knew that in the deepest basement of her soul.

This was something more.

She tucked her hair behind her ear with a shaking hand. "You have to promise to sleep with me. Often. As in sex. Whenever I want...whenever _you_ want."

He narrowed his eyes. "Is that all?"

She tilted her head and pretended to consider. "Maybe you could bring me a cup of tea once in awhile."

He snarled and hauled her to her feet. "Anything else?"

She swallowed as his gaze drifted over her face, predatory and impatient. Her lips tingled. "You have to kiss me whenever you leave. None of this running off and abandoning me in the middle of no where like you do with John."

Sherlock took a step, his thigh wedging between her legs as he pressed her back against the doorframe. Molly shuddered. He bent his head, his lips hovering just above hers. She put a hand against his chest, stopping him.

"Is that a yes?" she asked, trying to keep her voice light. Trying hide the fact that this moment was a ballbearing and that her whole life would pivot on his answer.

He placed his palm flat above her head. She held still.

His lips brushed against hers. "Yes," he breathed.

She closed her eyes at the word, suddenly overwhelmed. By the unbearable weight of her love. By the unbelievable path her life had taken. But mostly by the responsibility of showing this amazing man what it could be to belong to someone.

So Molly pulled him inside the bedroom.

She pressed him down into the mattress and showed him with her lips and her tongue. She took him in her mouth until he was shaking beneath her. She drove him ruthlessly to the edge again and again, riding his pleasure like the tide during a storm until every fraction of his mind was lost to the sensation of her. Until his fingers were knots in her hair and he begged for release.

Until there was nothing but the two of them lost on the sea of the rapidly diminishing night.

* * *

The third time Molly woke up it was morning, and she was lying in a puddle of her own drool. She flailed blindly for the side table, finding her phone after several seconds of hunting. She cracked one eye open and groaned. It was well past ten.

She rolled onto her back, spreading like a starfish beneath the covers. The rest of the bed was empty again. Molly squinted at the ceiling and tried to work out if she had been dreaming. If the gasp of his breath against her collarbone as he slid, hard and thick, inside of her had just been a lovely dream.

Everything ached, from the soreness between her legs to the bruised center of her chest, as if her heart had tried to escape from the confines of its ribbed cage sometime in the night. Molly yawned and stretched lazily. Sunlight danced across the ceiling. She grinned up at it, letting the secret girly-est part of her revel in her victory. Revel in the-

"I have a case."

Molly squeaked and bolted upright. She managed to grab the sheets as she sat up, grasping them tightly under her chin. Sherlock raised his eyebrows at the undignified sound, but didn't move from the chair at the end of the bed.

He had been up awhile, his hair dry except for the faint dampness clinging to the tips of his curls. Other than that fine detail, he looked exactly like the worlds only consulting detective, from the tailored lines of his suit right down to the gleam on the tip of his leather shoes.

He looked delicious.

She wanted to take him apart. Wanted to rip off his expensive clothes and do unspeakable things to him until the polish was worn thin. Until he was hers again. Molly flushed, bunching the knot of covers tighter between her fingers.

If Sherlock noticed the sudden change in the air-god, the smell of her unraveling desire-he showed no signs. His fingers were tented under his chin. He studied her cooly. God _damn_ him and his casual sensuality.

His phone buzzed. When he looked down Molly took the opportunity to try to smooth down her hair, cursing when her fingers got stuck in the dense tangles. She had a pretty good idea how she looked, bed wrinkles pressed into her cheeks and dark circles under her eyes. The exact contrast to GQ sitting across from her.

She sighed in exasperation. He glanced back up, distracted. "I have to go. The Ukraine it looks like...it is uncertain how long we will be occupied."

Molly nodded. He checked his watch, and she groped under the covers for her underware. For her shirt. Hell, for his shirt. She came up empty, smiling brightly when he looked back at her.

He frowned, started to speak and then stood instead. He shifted awkwardly. Molly stifled a smile. Awkward looked particularly adorable on Sherlock. He cleared his throat, "John informed me that it is bad form to leave a woman in your bed without and explaination." He looked extremely put out by this piece of information, but Molly had stopped listening.

"John?" she hissed, glancing toward the door. "John's here? And he _knows_?"

Sherlock frowned. "Yes, of course. John is an integral part of my operation. Surely you understood that he was...that he would..." he paused, visibly trying to collect himself. "That he would be informed of our, uh, situation."

Molly dragged the sheet off the bed with her as she stood up, wrapping them around her like a toga. Moisture rubbed between her thighs, and she was suddenly desperately aware of her need for a shower. And a cup of tea. And about 48 hours of silence to process the infuriating and wonderful direction her life had just taken.

They eyed each other across the room. His phone rang. "Molly, I-"

"It's fine," she interrupted, waving a hand. "I just thought that we might keep this to ourselves for a few days before everyone and Mrs. Hudson knew."

Sherlock looked pained. He tapped a finger nervously against his side. "Uh, about Mrs. Hudson-"

"Oh for heaven's sake," Molly threw up her hands, before quickly grabbing the sheet as it started to slip.

He opened his mouth again, but she seriously couldn't stand to hear one more fumbling explanation out of his delectable mouth. She needed to pee and brush her hair.

She held up a hand. "It's all fine. Really. We can talk later. When you're not so busy. I just need to use your shower."

He looked relieved and gestured toward the bathroom door. "I took the liberty of drawing you a bath. Mrs. Hudson brought up some clean clothes."

Molly decided she loved him.

Sherlock put a hand on the doorknob, his phone still ringing. "I have to take this. John and I have some details to sort out before we go...we should still be here when you get out."

She nodded. He answered his mobile, his voice clipped and professional as he slipped out the door. As if he had never groaned her name the night before. As if he was just himself.

Molly looked at the bed, its covers twisted and half torn off the edge. She wondered if she might still be dreaming, but the sharp tang of sex still hung in the air and the throbbing between her legs was real.

She made her way into the bathroom, the tail of the sheet dragging behind her. The bathwater was still steaming, the air filled with the smell of peppermint. A set of comfortable trousers and one of her soft weekend shirts was folded nearly on the sink. Yes, it was most definitely love.

By the time she slipped in into the warm bathwater, Molly didn't really care if it was a dream or not. She decided that whatever it was, it was just fine. She leaned her head back on the porcelain and closed her eyes.

It wouldn't always be like this.

Sherlock was a minefield. He could shatter her into a million pieces with one slip of his clever tongue. She sank down further in the water until it covered her chin and decided it it would be the most enjoyable risk she would ever take.

* * *

Molly slipped silently into the kitchen, still drying her hair with a towel. She could hear Sherlock's voice drifting in from the sitting room, but it was John who stood at the counter pouring a cup of tea.

She bit back a sigh. This should be fun. Her own Baker Street version of the walk of shame. She folded the town neatly over the back of the kitchen chair, suddenly grateful to be back in her own clothes. Grateful to be clean, even though the smell of Sherlock's shampoo still clung to her.

It wasn't very good armor. But it would have to do.

John turned around and blew across the top of his tea, his eyes steady on her over the rim of his cup. She blushed, cursing herself. She had taken down the famous Sherlock Holmes. The genius detective. The Virgin. She had brought him to his knees. Literally.

She wasn't about to let John Watson scare her. She crossed her arms.

"So..." he said to a spot above her head, "you and-"

Molly nodded. "Yes."

John squinted at her, his tea hovering half forgotten on the way to his mouth.

Her stomach rumbled. The whole kitchen smelled like warm chocolate, and she could just see Mrs. Hudson's silver breakfast tray peeking out behind John's back. It suddenly occurred to her that she was ravenous. She started inching around the table.

John opened his mouth and then closed it again, his face twisted. Molly understood. Everything she knew about Sherlock was suddenly rearranging itself in her head.

"So did he..." John stammered, "I mean, did you..."

"That is none of your business Dr. Watson," she said primly, taking down a cup from the cabinet.

She glanced sideways at him as she picked out a teabag. "But yes. We did. He did."

John put his cup down with a sharp click.

Molly hid a smile and filled her cup from the still warm kettle. John was silent as she squeezed lemon into her tea. She knew from the weight of his gaze what was coming next.

"Molly-" he started.

She leaned a hip against the counter. "Why do you stay with him?"

John frowned. "Pardon?"

She took a sip of tea. "You were about to warn me. Tell me that Sherlock will hurt me-as if I didn't know." She shrugged. "And you're probably right. So my question is, why do _you_ stay with him?"

John glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. Molly knew that he was about to dismiss her. She took a breath.

"He didn't just hurt you, John. He evicerated you. You listened to the sound of his body hitting the pavement for god sakes. And yet you stayed."

John looked down, his shoulders hunched. "He's my best friend," John said finally, as if that answered everything. As if friendship was some sort of inevitable force that left him without other choices.

Molly thought about Sherlock. About the pull of him, as if he were gravity itself. Maybe it was enough of an answer. Baffling and infuriating and true.

"I love him," she answered.

John looked at her for a long moment, a sort of understanding passing between them, like two drowning victims who have just discovered they are clinging to the same life raft in the middle of the endless empty ocean. He shook his head, "I think, Molly Hooper, that you might be even more insane than I am. And that's really saying something."

John slid the folded newspaper out from under the decomposing human hand on the kitchen table, winked at her, and heading out to the sitting room. "Welcome to the family," he called over his shoulder.

Molly huffed out a laugh and swiped a muffin off the tray. It was still warm. She finished it in three very unladylike bites. Sex and warm chocolate muffins-her day could not get any better. With a sigh of contentment, she grabbed another muffin and stepping out into the sitting room.

She froze in the doorway, oblivious to the hot tea sloshing over her fingers.

Her grandmother's chair.

The ratty old armchair she had inherited after her grandmother's funeral was sitting in Sherlock's living room like it belonged there.

Molly frowned. She could see where the soft gray fabric had worn thin on the arms and the bright pink patch she had sewn over a hole last winter. Yes, it was definitely her grandmother's chair.

Except that it was no longer in her own small living room. It was here. At Baker street. Looking somehow wildly out of place and yet perfectly at home nestled between the boy's chairs.

A flock of starlings took flight in the hollow of her chest, at the sight of that familiar chair, their wings beating against the inside of her breastbone. Her teacup shivered in its saucer. Sherlock turned from his place in the window, the mobile still pressed against his ear, his eyes a question she didn't know how to answer.

So she looked away, and crossed the room on unsteady legs. She couldn't help but trace the curved edge of the chair with one reverent finger before sitting down. In front of her, John sat in his chair reading the newspaper as if something monumental wasn't happening.

With a shaking hand, Molly managed to set her cup down on the side table. Rosie played with John's shoelaces, babbling happily at his feet. The sound of Mrs. Hudson's off key singing as she cleaned the foyer downstairs drifted through the open door. John rustled the paper, oblivious to the fact that a picture of Sherlock and him graced the front page. Molly leaned back into the chair, and tried to remember how to breath. Behind her, Sherlock came closer, his hand resting on the chair above her head as he continued his conversation. She closed her eyes.

It sounded like a home.

Not a normal home, certainly, but a home all the same. She swallowed against the hot lump in her throat.

Sherlock cut his phone call off abruptly. "Lestrade is waiting for us at the airport," he announced to the room, sweeping past her to gather his coat. John put down his paper as Sherlock continued, "Sensitive evidence. He wasn't able to relay it all over the phone. Multiple homicides. Someone is killing them _after_ he cuts them open and adds a second liver to the bodies...why another liver? It doesn't make any sense. Fascinating..." he trailed off, muttering to himself as he shoved things in his overnight bag.

John rolled his eyes at her and reached for the baby. But Rosie had rolled over and fallen asleep on the rug, one pudgy hand clutching the soggy corner of her favorite blanket. He glanced up at her. "Do you mind? Mrs. Hudson is on her way up-"

"Of course, its-"

"John." Sherlock snapped. "come on." John stood, hastily gathering his own coat as Sherlock swept out the door without another word.

John hesitated.

Molly smiled. "I think," she said, "if you start apologizing every time Sherlock acts like an ass, well, you'll never stop."

John nodded and followed Sherlock down the stairs. Molly looked down at the sleeping baby. At the pile of crime photographs at her elbow and the simmering benson burner on the kitchen table. She fingered the frayed tuft of cotton peaking out from the worn chair.

"Oh Molly," Mrs. Hudson breathed from the doorway, both hands clutched over her mouth. Even from across the room, Molly could see the tears shimmering in the old woman's eyes.

Molly shook her head, shrugging one shoulder. "I know...it's..." she paused, laughing to herself, "I don't know what it is to be honest."

Mrs. Hudson crossed the room, touching Rosie's sleeping head lightly before perching on the edge of John's chair. "Oh, Molly dear, he must-"

Sherlock cleared his throat from the doorway. Mrs. Hudson's mouth snapped shut, and she sunk back into the chair, as if trying to fade into the fabric. Molly turned away from the gleeful smile Mrs. Hudson was failing to hide behind a handkerchief and watched Sherlock step stiffly back into the room.

He was bundled in his coat and gloves, dark curls tousled by the wind. His cheeks were flush. Molly could see the shine of the new case gleaming in his eyes. Could practically hear the whir of his mind processing the data.

But he stood still, hesitating on his own threshold. Molly waited.

After a pause, he crossed the room. Molly looked up as he slid one gloved hand under her jaw, tilting her face up as he bent over. The leather was achingly soft. Molly had a sudden vision of other places those gloves could touch. The buttery fabric tracing the lines of her body, those long fingers playing along her skin. She met his eye and saw that he knew where her thoughts had strayed.

She just had time to see the answering heat flicker in his gaze, silver to gunmetal, before he kissed her. His lips were soft, barely a touch. But she felt the brief brush of his tongue against her top lip before he pulled away.

His thumb lingered on the corner of her mouth before he stood up again. It occurred to her that she wasn't sure if she could handle Sherlock getting any better at kissing. Or bless her, other things. Molly tucked her hair behind her ear and tried to ignore Mrs. Hudson's wide eyes.

Sherlock clasped his hands behind his back, drawing himself up to his full height. "I believe I have fulfilled the relationship requirements that you stipulated earlier." Molly could hear the hint of roughness in his otherwise formal tone. She smiled at him. He rocked back on his heels and frowned. "I'm not sure how long I will be gone. It is quite possible that communication-"

Molly waved her hand. "Go. Be Sherlock Holmes."

He turned on his heel, hesitating briefly at the door. He looked back, something she couldn't name bristling on his face as if he had something left to say but no words left to say it. She tried not to memorize him standing there.

"Go." she said softly. He nodded and was gone.

She pressed back into the soft cushion. It smelled like mothballs and rosewater. It smelled like her old life.

"He loves you." Mrs. Hudson said.

Molly touched the edge of her grandmother's chair and tried not to look at the empty doorway. She nodded. It wasn't a question.

* * *

 **That's it my friends. I fell in love with this version of these characters, and am considering a sequel. Or perhaps something new in the Sherlock fandom? Let me know what you think. Either way, thank you for reading. Love, versarilaetus xoxo**


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